"Come, come," said Billy, "you ain't half the sinner you want us to think, my dear. 'Tis just a habit you've fallen into, George—to frighten us all with your fearful wickedness. But you didn't ought only to talk of it; you ought to do some wicked things, so as we can believe in you—eh, Adam?"
Mr. Winter was of simpler understanding.
"If he don't believe in Providence, he's about wicked enough," answered the farmer.
A mourning coach conveying Jacob and Auna drove past the pedestrians. Bullstone had stopped to see the earth returned to his wife's grave, and Barlow Huxam had stopped with him.
Auna sat beside her father and held his hand. She did not attempt to speak. He had leaned back in the carriage and shut his eyes. When they reached Red House, he roamed away up the valley and Auna took off her new mourning frock and went about her business.
Jacob did not return to dinner, and presently his daughter set out to find him.
"I'd come," said Peter, "but he'll do more for you. The dark will soon be down—so best you not go far."
Auna took a couple of dogs and started to seek her father. She believed that she knew where he would be, and she was right. He sat on a mossy stone two miles up the valley. It was a spot dedicated of old to Margery and the stone, carved by time into a natural resting-place, had long been known to her children as "Mother's Stone."
Jacob addressed Auna as though he were expecting her. He was very quiet for the moment; but she feared his look. His hat was off and his hair was rough, for he had been running his hands through it.
"A great thought—to put this stone on her grave," he said. "Here she sat a thousand times, and it belongs to her. It's her stone, Auna. You can't give the dead much. And yet to give her a stone—her I denied bread——"