“In about an hour your grandfather returned, and we went across the churchyard to find your uncle, talking as we went of the way in which the fever and the overwork had changed him.
“‘He will need a long rest,’ said Dr. Harford. ‘He hath worn himself out with the woes of others and with the noisome air of those pestilent gaols.’
“I said it was after all natural enough, for he had ever had a special feeling for prisoners since his time in Oxford Castle, and Herefordshire was the very best place he could have come to for a rest and change.
“Well, by that we had drawn near to the porch, and saw that he was sitting on this western bench and must have fallen asleep, for he had taken off the long curled wig that all gentlemen wore then much as they do now, and with his short hair he looked curiously like the Captain Harford who had saved Bosbury Cross.
“But something in his perfect stillness struck Dr. Harford with sudden anxiety. We bent close down to him—he had ceased to breathe, and from his face death had smoothed away all the lines of sorrow, so that he looked once more young. I wish I could describe to you the wonderful serene dignity of his expression—but that is not to be put into words. Here in this porch where five-and-twenty years before I had wedded him to my dear niece, God had once more united the husband and wife.”
“It is such a pity people have to die,” said Bobbie, kicking the flagstones with energy, because he saw tears in Mollie’s eyes and wished to keep them from his own.
“You think so?” said his grandfather, with a smile. “And quite right too at your age. But when like me you are an old man of four-score years and ten, there’ll be so many waiting for you on the other side of the river that you’ll be glad when you are told to cross over. I hear your grandfather’s step on the path, Mollie, and when we two old friends chat over old times together, ’tis hard for you young ones to get in a word, so you had best go in and see the Harford monuments, and Bishop Swinfield’s head which was rescued from Hereford Cathedral.”
“There’s no monument to Uncle Gabriel,” said Mollie, wiping away her tears.
“My child, his body lies in the chancel, but Bosbury Cross is his monument, and he could not have a better,” said the Vicar.