“Yes,” the sexton returned impassively, “it’s hard enough.”
“It is rather unusual work for a woman, too,” he said.
To this very obvious remark she returned no answer, a stone to which she had come in her digging seeming to absorb all her attention. She unearthed the obstacle with some difficulty, seized it with her rough hands, and threw it up at the feet of the stranger, who watched her with that idle interest which labor begets in the unconcerned observer.
“Do you always do this work?” Farnsworth asked at length.
“Yes,” was the laconic return.
“But the old sexton,—Joe Grimwet,—is he gone?”
The woman looked up with some interest at this indication that the other had some previous acquaintance with Kempton and its people. She did not, however, stop her labor, as a man would probably have stopped.
“Yes,” she said. “He’s buried over yonder,—there beyond the burdocks.”
The gentleman changed his position uneasily. Some subtile disquietude had arisen to disturb his serenity. The wind rustled mournfully among the dry leaves, the pebbles rattled against the spade of the grave-digger, increasing the sombreness of a scene which might easily affect one at all susceptible to outward influences. In such an atmosphere a sensitive nature not unfrequently experiences a certain feeling of unreality, as if dealing with scenes and creatures of the imagination rather than with actualities; and Farnsworth, whatever the delicacy of his mental fibre, was conscious of such a sense at this moment. He hastened to speak again, as if the sound of his own voice were needed to assure him of the genuineness of the place and scene.
“But how long has he been dead?” he asked. “And his daughter; what became of her?”