e churchyard.'

"'But a pilgrim,' said an objector. 'You must bury him in consecrated
ground; you can't shut him out of the Heavenly Kingdom.'

"'No matter. Ask the priest. If the dead man can pay for a plot
of ground for a grave, well and good; or if the villagers will
subscribe....'

"The head man looked at the little crowd assembled. They were a poor
and needy crowd. No one answered him. Then, without doing any more,
the head man walked away, and the dead body remained in the street.

"It seemed no one would pay for the grave, but in the afternoon a
woman who lived on the outskirts came and claimed the pilgrim as a
distant relative. He could scarcely have been a relative, except
inasmuch as we are all descended from Adam.

"The head man and the village priest rejoiced, and the woman took the
dead body home and washed it, and clothed it in white linen, and she
ordered a three-rouble coffin covered with purple cloth.

"But she was a very poor woman, and when she had paid for the grave
she had no money to pay for singers and for prayers.

"'God will have mercy,' she said. 'And belike he was a good man, a
pilgrim.'

"And that woman was a virgin," added Jeremy abruptly and, as I
thought, irrelevantly. But the chambers of that old man's mind were
strangely furnished.

"She was a virgin. What remains to be said? She hired a man to dig a
grave, and another to wheel the barrow with the coffin. She had no
friends who would follow the coffin with her, but in the main street
she found a cripple whom she had once befriended, and two little boys
who liked to sing the funeral chant.

"Thus the old pilgrim was taken to the grave, and in his honour a
simple woman, two street children, and a cripple followed his corse."

* * * * *

There was a long pause.

"You think he died," old Jeremy went on. "Oh, no; he did not die, he
only went on more quickly. When he fell down dead in the street his
soul suddenly began a new life, a life like a dream. Whilst the dogs
were barking and snapping at his old legs he suddenly saw in front of
him in the darkness a great bright star beckoning him, and in his new
life he got up from the road and rushed towards that star--rushed, for
he felt young again, younger than any boy, and all the lameness and
tiredness were passed away.

"Suddenly, in front of him, and coming to meet him, he saw a horse,
draped all in silk, and attendants. A man came up to him and