"I think differently. To make hay in a churchyard, Thomas, is very bad form, and shows a lack of proper and delicate feeling. Anyway, there's to be a thorough clean-up. We've got a lot of very interesting graves here, and when people come and ask to see the churchyard I don't like wading through a foot of weeds. Where's the famous tomb with the music book and bass viol on it? I wanted to show it to a man only last week, and couldn't find it."
Mr. Gollop led the way and indicated a slate amid the Baskerville monuments.
"There 'tis. A riddle and an open book; and the book actually had a bit of the Old Hundredth—the music, I mean—scratched on it when first 'twas set up. But time have eaten that off, I believe. He was a fine fiddler in the days afore the organs was put in the church, and then he had to go; and he soon died after the joy of playing on Sundays was taken from him. He made up his verse himself."
Mr. Gollop drew back the herbage from this slate and read out the rhyme half hidden beneath.
"'Praises on tombs are to no purpose spent,
A man's good name is his own monument.'
"But a good name don't last as long as a good slate, when all's said. There's Vivian Baskerville's stone, you see. 'Tis a great addition to the row, and cost seven pounds odd. And there lieth the suicide, as should be yonder if justice had been done. But Humphrey Baskerville don't mean to take his place in the family row. Like him, that is. Won't even neighbour with his fellow dust."
"You oughtn't to repeat such nonsense, Gollop."
"Nonsense or no nonsense, 'tis the truth. Here's the place he's chosen, and bought it, too, right up in this corner, away from everybody; and his gravestone is to turn its back upon t'other dead folk—like he's always turned his back upon the living."
Mr. Gollop indicated a lonely corner of the churchyard.
"That's where he's going to await the trump."