the dark crossing.

[Illustration: THE CALVARY AT HARE STREET, 1913

The grave is to the left of the mound.]

XVII

BURIAL

We had thought that he should be buried at Manchester; but a paper of
directions was found saying that he wished to be buried at Hare Street,
in his own orchard, at the foot of his Calvary. My mother arrived on the
Monday evening, and in the course of Tuesday we saw his body for the
last time, in biretta and cassock, with a rosary in his hands. He looked
strangely young, like a statue carved in alabaster, with no trace of
pain or weariness about him, simply asleep.

His coffin was taken to the midnight train by the clergy of the Salford
Cathedral and from Buntingford station by my brother Fred to his own
little chapel, where it rested all the Thursday. On the Friday the
Cardinal came down, with Canons from Westminster and the choir. A
solemn Requiem was sung. The Cardinal consecrated a grave, and he was
laid there, in the sight of a large concourse of mourners. It was very
wonderful to see them. There were many friends and neighbours, but there
were also many others, unknown to me and even to each other, whom Hugh
had helped and comforted in different ways, and whose deep and visible
grief testified to the sorrow of their loss and to the loyalty of their
affection.

I spent some strange solitary days at Hare Street in the week which
followed, going over from Cambridge and returning, working through
papers and letters. There were all Hugh's manuscripts and notes, his
books of sermons, all the written evidences of his ceaseless energy. It
was an astonishing record of diligence and patient effort. It seemed
impossible to believe that in a life of perpetual travelling and endless
engagements he yet had been able to accomplish all this mass of work.
His correspondence too--though he had evidently destroyed all private
spiritual confidences--was of wide and varied range, and it was
difficult to grasp that it yet represented the work of so comparatively
few years. The accumulation also of little, unknown, unnamed gifts was
very great, while the letters of grief and sympathy which I received
from friends of his, whose very names were unknown to me, showed how
intricate and wide his personal relations had been. And yet he had
carried all this burden very lightly and easily. I realised how
wonderful his power must have been of storing away in his mind the
secrets of many hearts, always read