d me, because of
the back of his head, like. For God's sake keep out of his way, miss."

The sexton stood in a musing and yet a stern and defiant attitude, with
the right elbow clasped in the left-hand palm, the right hand resting
half-clinched upon the forehead, and the shoulders thrown back, as if
ready for a blow.

"What a very odd way to stand!" I said.

"Yes, miss. And what he said was odder. 'Six, and the mother!' I heared
un say; 'no cure for it, till I have all seven.' But stop, miss. Not a
breath to any one! Here comes the poor father and mother to speak the
blessing across their daughter's grave--and the grave not two foot down
yet!"

CHAPTER XXXVI

A SIMPLE QUESTION

Now this account of what Jacob Rigg had seen and heard threw me into a
state of mind extremely unsatisfactory. To be in eager search of some
unknown person who had injured me inexpressibly, without any longing for
revenge on my part, but simply with a view to justice--this was a very
different thing from feeling that an unknown person was in quest of
me, with the horrible purpose of destroying me to insure his own wicked
safety.

At first I almost thought that he was welcome to do this; that such a
life as mine (if looked at from an outer point of view) was better to be
died than lived out. Also that there was nobody left to get any good out
of all that I could do; and even if I ever should succeed, truth would
come out of her tomb too late. And this began to make me cry, which I
had long given over doing, with no one to feel for the heart of it.

But a thing of this kind could not long endure; and as soon as the sun
of the morrow arose (or at least as soon as I was fit to see him), my
view of the world was quite different. Here was the merry brook, playing
with the morning, spread around with ample depth and rich retreat of
meadows, and often, after maze of leisure, hastening with a tinkle into
shadowy delight of trees. Here, as well, were happy lanes, and footpaths
of a soft content, unworn with any pressure of the price of time or
business. None of them knew (in spite, at flurried spots, of their own
direction posts) whence they were coming or whither going--only that
here they lay, between the fields or through them, like idle veins
of earth, with sometimes company of a man or boy, whistling to his
footfall, or a singing maid with a milking pail. And how ungrateful it
would be to forget the pleasant copses, in waves of deep gr