"No, Dan—can't say as I do. The churchyard's the place for dead men—not living ones. Us shall spend a terrible lot of time here come presently, and I don't want to waste much of it here now."
"'Tis a steadying job to read the verses above all these bones," he said.
"Read 'em, then," she answered. "But don't ax me to. I hate graves, and I hate everything to do with death. With all my might I hate it."
"You shouldn't feel so. 'Tis a part of life, and no more can we have life without it, than we can have a book without a last page. And no one of all these men carried anything into the next world but his record in this. Yet to remember how soon we must give up our clay be a solemn, useful thought."
She did not answer, and he strolled apart and considered the trite warnings, pious hopes, and implicit pathos of dates, where figures often told the saddest tale.
A man came into the churchyard, and, looking round, Daniel, very greatly to his astonishment, saw Jarratt Weekes talking to his wife. Scarcely believing his own eyes, he strode over a row of the silent people and approached.
Neither his wife nor himself had spoken to the castle-keeper since their marriage; yet at last it seemed that the rejected suitor was recovering from his disappointment and about to forget and forgive the past. Weekes shook hands with Brendon, as he had already done with Sarah Jane; then he addressed them both.
"I'm hoping as you'll let bygones be bygones, Brendon. I was hard hit, and—well, 'tis no good going over old ground. I did my best to get you away from Sarah Jane here, and I failed. There's no more to be said."
"Except that you didn't fight fair," answered Daniel calmly. "You tried by very underhand ways to do me out of my own, and I'm sorry for it. All the same, I'm willing enough to forgive you and be friendly henceforth, Mr. Weekes."
"So am I," declared Sarah Jane. "'Twas a very great kindness in you to be so fond of me, and I never shall forget it. But there was but one man in the world for me after I met Daniel here, and so I hope there won't be no more feeling against us."