Tim raised himself until he stood almost upright.
“It’s the money,” he whispered, “the money I’ve saved for me burying.”
He turned to stretch his thin, bloodless finger toward the bleak cluster of mounds on the hillside where mouldered the dead of the poor-farm.
“I’ll no lie there,” he said, with husky intensity. “I’ve scraped and scraped, and saved and saved, and it’s the wee bit money I’ve got to pay for a spot of consecrated ground over to Tiverton. Ye’ll no put me here when I’m gone! I’ll no rest here! Me folks was respectable in the Old Isle, an’ not unbeknowing the gentry; and there’s never a one put outside consecrated ground. Ye’ll promise me I’ll be put in the graveyard over to Tiverton, and me got the money to pay.”
Springer was as unemotional and unimaginative as a hearty, practical, well-fed man could be, but seeing the tears in the old pauper’s bleared eyes, and hearing the passion of his tone, he could not but be moved. He had heard something of this before. His predecessor in office had mentioned Tim, and his twenty years’ saving, but so few were the chances a pauper in Dartbank had of picking up even a penny that the hoard even of so long a time could not be large. Now and then some charitable soul had given the old man a trifle. A vague sympathy was felt for the pathetic longing to be assured of a grave in consecrated ground, even among the villagers who regarded the idea itself as rank superstition.
“It’s all right, Tim,” the Overseer said. “If you go off while I have the say, I’ll see to it myself. If you’d be any more comfortable over in Tiverton, we’ll plant you there.”
“Thank yer honor kindly,” Tim answered. “The Calligans has always been decent, God-fearing folks, and it’s meself’d be loth to disgrace the name a-crawling up out of this unholy graveyard forby on Judgment Day, and all the world there to see, and I never could do it so sly but the O’Tools and the O’Hooligans ’d spy on me, and they always so mad with envy of the Calligans they’d be after tattling the news all over Heaven, and bringing shame to me whole kith and kin.”
The Overseer laughed, and responded that if Tim had laid by the money to pay for the job, he would certainly see that the grave was made in the consecrated earth of Tiverton churchyard. Then with a brisk step he passed on to attend to the sordid affairs of his office within. The most troublesome matter was left until the last.
“As to the Trafton child,” he said to Huldy and Sam, “I don’t see that anything can be done. I’ve spoken to the Selectmen about it, and they don’t think the town should be called on to pay out twenty-five dollars when here’s a place for the child for nothing.”