givin'! They gits theirselves
burnt to ashes 'cos they don't _want_ to be raised up,--they'se never
praised the Lord 'ere, an' they wouldn't know 'ow to do it _there_! But,
mercy me!" concluded Twitt ruminatingly,--"I've seen orful queer things
bred out of ashes!--beetles an' sich like reptiles,--an' I wouldn't much
care to see the spechul stock as raises itself from the burnt bits of a
liar!"

Helmsley hardly knew whether to smile or to look serious,--such quaint
propositions as this old stonemason put forward on the subject of
cremation were utterly novel to his experience. And while he yet stood
under the little porch of Twitt's cottage, there came shivering up
through the quiet autumnal air a slow thud of breaking waves.

"Tide's comin' in,"--said Twitt, after listening a minute or two--"An'
that minds me o' what I was goin' to tell ye about Tom o' the Gleam.
After the inkwist, the gypsies came forward an' claimed the bodies o'
Tom an' 'is Kiddie,--an' they was buried accordin' to Tom's own wish,
which it seems 'e'd told one of 'is gypsy pals to see as was carried out
whenever an' wheresoever 'e died. An' what sort of a buryin'd'ye think
'e 'ad?"

Helmsley shook his head in an expressed inability to imagine.

"'Twas out there,"--and Twitt pointed with one hand to the shining
expanse of the ocean--"The gypsies put 'im an' is Kiddie in a basket
coffin which they made theirselves, an' covered it all over wi' garlands
o' flowers an' green boughs, an' then fastened four great lumps o' lead
to the four corners, an' rowed it out in a boat to about four or five
miles from the shore, right near to the place where the moon at full
'makes a hole in the middle o' the sea,' as the children sez, and there
they dropped it into the water. Then they sang a funeral song--an' by
the Lord!--the sound o' that song crept into yer veins an' made yer
blood run cold!--'twas enough to break a man's 'art, let alone a
woman's, to 'ear them gypsy voices all in a chorus wailin' a farewell to
the man an' the child in the sea,--an' the song floated up an' about,
'ere an' there an' everywhere, all over the land from Cleeve Abbey
onnards, an' at Blue Anchor, so they sez, it was so awsome an' eerie
that the people got out o' their beds, shiverin', an' opened their
windows to listen, an' when they listened they all fell a cryin' like
children. An' it's no wonder the inn where poor Tom did his bad deed and
died his bad death, is shut up for good, a