The cottage door stood open as we rode into the yard, and from it a faint smoke came curling, with a smell of peat. Within I found the smould’ring turves scattered about as on the day of my first arrival, and among them Joan’s father stretch’d, flat on his face: only this time the cat was curl’d up quietly, and lying between the old man’s shoulder blades.
“Drunk again,” said Joan shortly.
But looking more narrowly, I marked a purplish stain on the ground by the old man’s mouth, and turned him softly over.
“Joan,” said I, “he’s not drunk—he’s dead!”
She stood above us and looked down, first at the corpse, then at me, without speaking for a time: at last—
“Then I reckon he may so well be buried.”
“Girl,” I call’d out, being shocked at this callousness, “’tis your father—and he is dead!”
“Why that’s so, lad. An he were alive, shouldn’t trouble thee to bury ’n.”
And so, before night, we carried him up to the bleak tor side, and dug his grave there; the black cat following us to look. Five feet deep we laid him, having dug down to solid rock; and having covered him over, went silently back to the hovel. Joan had not shed a single tear.