ession.

"Nigh on twenty year, mum, come Michaelmas," replied Dodge. "I've lain
my couple o' hundred under the sod, easy; and a fine lot o' corpses they
was too, take 'em one with another." Dodge was evidently prepared to
stand up for the average corpse of the Craddock district against all
competitors.

"This is a very healthy neighbourhood, I suppose," observed Mrs.
Temperley, seemingly by way of supplying an explanation of the proud
fact.

"Lord bless you, as healthy as any place in the kingdom. There wasn't
one in ten as was ill when he died, as one may say."

"But that scarcely seems an unmixed blessing," commented the lady
musingly, "to go off suddenly in the full flush of health and spirits;
it would be so discouraging."

"Most was chills, took sudden," Dodge explained; "chills is wot chokes
up yer churchyards for yer. If we has another hard winter this year, we
shall have a job to find room in here. There's one or two in the village
already, as I has my eye on, wot----"

"Was this one a chill?" interrupted Mrs. Temperley, with a nod towards
the new grave.

"Wot, this here? Lord bless you, no, mum. This here's our schoolmarm.
Didn't you never hear tell about _her_?" This damning proof of his
companion's aloofness from village gossip seemed to paralyse the
gravedigger.

"Why everybody's been a talkin' about it. Over varty, she war, and ought
to 'a knowed better."

"But, with advancing years, it is rare that people _do_ get to know
better--about dying," Mrs. Temperley suggested, in defence of the
deceased schoolmistress.

"I means about her conduc'," Dodge explained; "scand'lous thing. Why,
she's been in Craddock school since she war a little chit o' sixteen."

"That seems to me a trifle dull, but scarcely scandalous," Mrs.
Temperley murmured.

"... And as steady and respectable a young woman as you'd wish to see
... pupil teacher she was, and she rose to be schoolmarm," Dodge went
on.

"It strikes me as a most blameless career," said his companion.
"Perhaps, as you say, considering her years, she ought to have known
better, but----"

"She sort o' belongs to the place, as one may say," Dodge proceeded,
evidently quite unaware that he had omitted to give the clue to the
situation. "She's lived here all her life."

"Then much may be forgiven her," muttered Mrs. Temperley.

"And everybody respected of her, and the parson he thought a deal o'
her, he did, and used to hold her up as a sample to the