ard, watched her
hand tracing the letters, and critically regarded her person in
relief against the white wall, till she grew so nervous that she
trembled visibly.

They went back to where the others were standing, talking in
undertones: and one said--Sue could not hear which--"She's his wife,
I suppose?"

"Some say Yes: some say No," was the reply from the charwoman.

"Not? Then she ought to be, or somebody's--that's very clear!"

"They've only been married a very few weeks, whether or no."

"A strange pair to be painting the Two Tables! I wonder Biles and
Willis could think of such a thing as hiring those!"

The churchwarden supposed that Biles and Willis knew of nothing
wrong, and then the other, who had been talking to the old woman,
explained what she meant by calling them strange people.

The probable drift of the subdued conversation which followed was
made plain by the churchwarden breaking into an anecdote, in a voice
that everybody in the church could hear, though obviously suggested
by the present situation:

"Well, now, it is a curious thing, but my grandfather told me a
strange tale of a most immoral case that happened at the painting of
the Commandments in a church out by Gaymead--which is quite within a
walk of this one. In them days Commandments were mostly done in gilt
letters on a black ground, and that's how they were out where I say,
before the owld church was rebuilded. It must have been somewhere
about a hundred years ago that them Commandments wanted doing up just
as ours do here, and they had to get men from Aldbrickham to do 'em.
Now they wished to get the job finished by a particular Sunday, so
the men had to work late Saturday night, against their will, for
overtime was not paid then as 'tis now. There was no true religion
in the country at that date, neither among pa'sons, clerks, nor
people, and to keep the men up to their work the vicar had to let 'em
have plenty of drink during the afternoon. As evening drawed on they
sent for some more themselves; rum, by all account. It got later and
later, and they got more and more fuddled, till at last they went
a-putting their rum-bottle and rummers upon the communion table, and
drawed up a trestle or two, and sate round comfortable and poured
out again right hearty bumpers. No sooner had they tossed off their
glasses than, so the story goes they fell down senseless, one and
all. How long they bode so they didn't know, but when the