t not gifted with any kind aspect. He trampsed over the
general graves, like the devil come to fetch their souls out; but when
he come here to the 'holy ring,' he stopped short, and stood with his
back to me. I could hear him count the seven graves, as pat as the
shells of oysters to pay for, and then he said all their names, as true,
from the biggest to the leastest one, as Betsy Bowen could 'a done it,
though none of 'em got no mark to 'em. Oh, the poor little hearts, it
was cruel hard upon them! And then my lady in the middle, making
seven. So far as I could catch over his shoulder, he seemed to be quite
a-talking with her--not as you and I be, miss, but a sort of a manner of
a way, like."

"And what did he seem to say? Oh, Jacob, how long you do take over it!"

"Well, he did not, miss; that you may say for sartain. And glad I was
to have him quick about it; for he might have redooced me to such a
condition--ay, and I believe a' would, too, if onst a' had caught
sight of me--as the parish might 'a had to fight over the appintment of
another sexton. And so at last a' went away. And I were that stiff with
scrooging in this cornder--"

"Is that all? Oh, that comes to nothing. Surely you must have more to
tell me? It may have been some one who knew our names. It may have been
some old friend of the family."

"No, miss, no! No familiar friend; or if he was, he were like King
David's. He bore a tyrannous hate against 'e, and the poison of asps
were under his lips. In this here hattitude he stood, with his back
toward me, and his reins more upright than I be capable of putting it.
And this was how he held up his elbow and his head. Look 'e see, miss,
and then 'e know as much as I do."

Mr. Rigg marched with a long smooth step--a most difficult strain for
his short bowed legs--as far as the place he had been pointing out; and
there he stood with his back to me, painfully doing what the tall man
had done, so far as the difference of size allowed.

It was not possible for me to laugh in a matter of such sadness; and yet
Jacob stood, with his back to me, spreading and stretching himself in
such a way, to be up to the dimensions of the stranger, that--low as it
was--I was compelled to cough, for fear of fatally offending him.

"That warn't quite right, miss. Now you look again," he exclaimed, with
a little readjustment. "Only he had a thing over one shoulder, the like
of what the Scotchmen wear; and his features was beyon