As the vicar arrived, Heathman Lintern, who had lost his self-control, was just knocking Mr. Gollop backwards into the arms of his sister. The man and woman fell together, and, with cries and hisses, others turned on Heathman. Then a force rallied to the rescue. Sunday hats were hurled off and trampled into the grass; Sunday coats were torn; Sunday collars were fouled. Not until half a dozen men, still fighting, had been thrust out of the churchyard, was Dennis able to learn the truth. Then he examined the cause of the riot and listened to Lintern.
The young man was bloody and breathless, but he gasped out his tale. A dozen people were already inspecting the new gravestone when Heathman passed the church on his way to chapel with his mother and sisters. He left them to see the cause of interest, and, discovering it, ordered Gollop instantly to remove it. This the sexton declined to do on the ground that it was Sunday. Thereupon, fetching tools, Heathman himself prepared to dig up the monument. But he was prevented. Many of the people approved of the joke and decreed that the board must stand. They arrested Heathman in his efforts to remove it. Then others took his side and endeavoured to drag down the monument.
Having heard both Lintern and Gollop, the clergyman read the mock inscription.
"D'you mean to say that you refuse to remove this outrageous thing?" he asked the sexton; but Thomas was in no mood for further reprimand. He had suffered a good deal in credit and temper. Now he mopped a bleeding nose and was insolent.
"Yes, I do; and I won't break the Fourth Commandment for you or fifty parsons. Who the mischief be you to tell me to labour on the Lord's Day, I should like to know? You'll bid me covet my neighbour's ass and take my neighbour's wife next, perhaps? And, when all's said, this writing be true and a lesson to the parish. Let 'em have the truth for once, though it do turn their tender stomachs."
"Get out of the churchyard, you old blackguard!" cried Heathman. "You're a disgrace to any persuasion, and you did ought to be hounded out of a decent village."
"Leave Gollop to me, Lintern. Now lend a hand here, a few of you; get this infamous thing away and destroyed before anybody else sees it. And the rest go into church at once. Put on your surplices quick, you boys; and you, Jenkins, tell Miss Masterman to play another voluntary."
Dennis issued his orders and then helped to dig up this outrage among the tombs. Thomas Gollop and his sister departed together. Ben North, Lintern, and another assisted Mr. Masterman.
Then came Humphrey Baskerville upon his way to church, and, despite the entreaty of the young clergyman that he would not read the thing set up over Nathan's grave, insisted on doing so.
"I hear in the street there's been a row about a tombstone to my brother. Who put it there? 'Tis too soon by half. I shall lift a stone to the man when the proper time comes," he said.