"Well," chimed in the village schoolmaster, "'twill soon fill. There's Miss Marlow."
"Dratted nonsense!" cried Mrs. Timber, making a dash into the company with a tankard of beer in each hand. "Miss Sophy'll marry Mr. Thorold, won't she? An' he, as the Squire of Heathton, 'as a family vault, ain't he? She'll sleep beside him as his wife, lawfully begotten."
"The Thorolds' vault is crowded," objected the stonemason. "Why, there's three-hundred-year dead folk there! A very old gentry lot, the Thorolds."
"Older than your Marlows!" snapped Mrs. Timber. "Who was he afore he came to take the Moat House five year ago? Came from nowhere--a tree without a root."
The schoolmaster contradicted.
"Nay, he came from Africa, I know--from Mashonaland, which is said to be the Ophir of King Solomon. And Mr. Marlow was a millionaire!"
"Much good his money'll do him now," groaned the buxom woman, who was a Dissenter. "Ah! Dives in torment."
"You've no call to say that, Mrs. Berry. Mr. Marlow wasn't a bad man."
"He was charitable, I don't deny, an' went to church regular," assented Mrs. Berry; "but he died awful sudden. Seems like a judgment for something he'd done."
"He died quietly," said the schoolmaster. "Dr. Warrender told me all about it--a kind of fit at ten o'clock last Thursday, and on Friday night he passed away as a sleeping child. He was not even sufficiently conscious to say good-by to Miss Sophy."