painted coffin.
The only ornament was a tin breastplate on the lid and the inscription
in black letters:

Martin Quirke,
Died November 3, 1900.
R.I.P.

The white coffin on the pile of golden earth was like the altar of some
pagan god. I stood apart as the priest, vesting himself in a black
stole, approached the graveside and began the recital of the burial
service in Latin. The gravediggers, whose own bones would one day be
interred anonymously in the same ground, stood on either side of him
with their spades, two grim acolytes. The minor official from the
workhouse, the symbol of the State, bared a long, narrow head, as white
and as smooth as the coffin on the heap of earth. I stood by a groggy
wooden cross, the eternal observer.

The priest spoke in a low monotone, holding the book close to his eyes
in the uncertain light. And as he read I fell to wondering who our
brother in the white coffin might be. Some merry tramp who knew the pain
and the joy of the road? Some detached soul who had shaken off the
burden of life's conventions, one who loved lightly and took punishment
casually? One who saw crime as a science, or merely a broken reed? Or a
soldier who had carried a knapsack in foreign campaigns? A creature of
empire who had found himself in Africa, or Egypt, or India, or the
Crimea, and come back again to claim his pile of golden earth in the
corner of the lord's demesne? If the men had time, perhaps they would
stick a little wooden cross over the spot where his bones were laid
down....

The priest's voice continued the recitation of the burial service and
the robin sang at the edge of the dim wood. Down the narrow strip of
rank burial ground a low wind cried, and the light, losing its glow in
the western sky, threw a grey pall on the grass. And under the influence
of the moment a little memory of people I had known and forgotten went
across my mind, a memory that seemed to stir in the low wind, a memory
of people who had at the last got their white, clean coffin and their
rest on a pile of golden earth, people who had gone like our brother in
the deal boards.... There was the man, the scholar, who had taught his
school, who had an intelligence, who could talk, who, perhaps, could
have written only--. The wind sobbed down the narrow strip of ground....
He had made his battle, indeed, a long-drawn-out battle, for he had only
given way step by step, gradually but inexorably yielding ground to the