een leafage
flowing down and up the channeled hills, waving at the wind to tints and
tones of new refreshment, and tempting idle folk to come and hear the
hush, and see the twinkled texture of pellucid gloom.

Much, however, as I loved to sit in places of this kind alone, for some
little time I feared to do so, after hearing the sexton's tale; for
Jacob's terror was so unfeigned (though his own life had not been
threatened) that, knowing as I did from Betsy's account, as well as his
own appearance, that he was not at all a nervous man, I could not help
sharing his vague alarm. It seemed so terrible that any one should come
to the graves of my sweet mother and her six harmless children, and,
instead of showing pity, as even a monster might have tried to do,
should stand, if not with threatening gestures, yet with a most hostile
mien, and thirst for the life of the only survivor--my poor self.

But terrible or not, the truth was so; and neither Betsy nor myself
could shake Mr. Rigg's conclusion. Indeed, he became more and more
emphatic, in reply to our doubts and mild suggestions, perhaps that his
eyes had deceived him, or perhaps that, taking a nap in the corner of
the buttress, he had dreamed at least a part of it. And Betsy, on the
score of ancient friendship and kind remembrance of his likings, put
it to him in a gentle way whether his knowledge of what Sally Mock had
been, and the calumnies she might have spoken of his beer (when herself,
in the work-house, deprived of it), might not have induced him to take
a little more than usual in going down so deep for her. But he answered,
"No; it was nothing of the sort. Deep he had gone, to the tiptoe of his
fling; not from any feeling of a wish to keep her down, but just because
the parish paid, and the parish would have measurement. And when that
was on, he never brought down more than the quart tin from the public;
and never had none down afterward. Otherwise the ground was so ticklish,
that a man, working too free, might stay down there. No, no! That
idea was like one of Sally's own. He just had his quart of Persfield
ale--short measure, of course, with a woman at the bar--and if that were
enough to make a man dream dreams, the sooner he dug his own grave, the
better for all connected with him."

We saw that we had gone too far in thinking of such a possibility; and
if Mr. Rigg had not been large-minded, as well as notoriously sober,
Betsy might have lost me all the be