"I don't like it, whoever 'tis," declared Hephzibah. "But since it had to be, I'm here. To bury the living be a very terrible piece of work, and I hope to heaven nothing evil will come of it."
"She deserves it, whoever she be," said Jarratt's wife.
"You mean you don't know who 'tis?"
"Not me, mother."
Mrs. Weekes sniffed.
"It puzzles my spirit to know how a man can keep anything hidden from his wife. If I'd been in your shoes, I'd have got the woman's name, and the man's name too, out of my husband double quick. Guy Fawkes and angels!—who be they, I should like to know, to keep their two-penny-halfpenny thoughts from us? A son's different. Of course I couldn't make Jarratt tell me. I wish they'd get on with it. The dew be going through my shoes and chilling me to the knees."
The church clock presently struck ten and a wave of excitement rippled round the rope. People swept this way and that, as people will. Shouts and laughter rose. The grass, trampled under many feet, emitted its own odour, and from the open earth a faint smell came. The sky was clear and a few stars twinkled. Light still hung westward and the great bulk of Lydford Castle loomed square and black against it.
A dance of many flames suddenly flashed through the grey gloom of summer night. The dew answered, and the earth was streaked and shot with points of fire. Above the smoky effulgence of the torches, the sky appeared to grow very dark. Everything outside this radiance of orange flame disappeared and was lost. Only within the glare the procession appeared and moved forward—a medley of lurid lights and ink black shadows.
"They're coming, they're coming!" cried many voices, and the solitary policeman, opening the rope, struggled to make a way for them. Agg, Lethbridge, and others, seeing his efforts futile, lent their aid, and presently into the ring the performers slowly came with torches waving above them. From the shed which they had left there echoed a hollow reverberation, repeated at intervals of half a minute. This represented the lich bell. A hymn rose as the procession approached, and the shrill treble voices of six boys singing together sounded thin and strange under the night.
The choir, in long white smocks, led the way. Then came six men with torches; and then Mr. Huggins and Mr. Taverner appeared as mourners. More torches followed, and Jarratt Weekes next played his part in a parson's gown with a broad black stole hung over it. On one side of him walked a boy with a book; on the other side a boy carried a tall candle. The huge shape of the 'Infant' in black, with a hat-band streaming behind him, followed; and at his side walked Joe Tapson, similarly attired. The disparity in their sizes created much merriment.