"Old Jan was glad to go, Lucy," he said. "You must remember that, and not grieve for him. He had a long life and a lonely one. But he is now walking beside still waters with her o' the white hands."
Night came, the rain ceased, and the moon reaped the stars with a golden sickle. The sky was calm, but the fells and dales were still roaring with the sound of many waters, and streaking the darkness with silver threads. Peter went home, stirred to the depths of his being.
The next afternoon, when the beck had subsided to its normal flow, Jan Straw's body was found in a pool and taken to Greystones. All the village, and shepherds from distant cots among the hills, were bidden to the funeral. Lucy and Barbara had no time for tears. Mistress Lynn would not have it said that she had not shown honour to her old servant, and, two days before the burial, the sisters were busy from dawn to dark baking arval cakes to be given to the guests. These little cakes were made of wheaten meal, and taken piously home, to be eaten in remembrance of the dead.
The ceremony was a solemn one in the mill-house. The old man, Peter's father, ate the arval cake with one hand over his eyes, and his figure bent as though in prayer. Peter's mother wept behind her handkerchief, and nibbled a crumb of it, saying softly:
"In memory o' thee, Jan Straw."
Peter, too, was not unmoved. The simplicity and pathos of the act brought tears to his honest eyes, of which he was not ashamed.
Later on John Fleming sat at one side of the fire smoking, Mistress Fleming at the other side knitting, and Peter lay on the rug between them, telling stories of Oxford, when the old man suddenly took his pipe from his mouth, and said:
"I wish you'd marry, Peter."
"Marry! Good heavens!"
"I want you to settle down. Once I had other views. I thought I'd live till you could read the burial service over me—earth to earth, dust to dust, ashes to ashes, in sure and certain hope—you know how it goes. Beautiful words, them! They kind o' sum up the big and the little o' life. Well, but now——"