Their loving lips kissed, for the last time, the cold, waxen forehead; and a groan escaped from Polly’s heart as the lid was replaced closely, this time by the father’s hands.
“Hush, Polly,” he whispered, “you said you would be strong.”
“I will, I will,” she sighed. And they stood for a few moments, hand clasped in hand, with the silence only broken by a smothered sob from below.
At last, reverently taking the little coffin in his arms, Tom Morrison bore it slowly down the stairs, followed by his weeping wife, who held something white in her hands, and this she laid over the coffin like a little pall.
Poor Budge was there, trying hard to keep down her grief, but a wail would burst forth; and covering her mouth tightly with her hands, she darted away into the back kitchen.
It was the little christening robe, that was to have been worn next day; and drip after drip, to form dark spots in the moonlight, the hot, burning tears of anguish fell from the mother’s eyes as they slowly bore the little burden out into the garden, down the neat path, and away to the corner where the willow laved its long green branches in the brook—a veritable stream of silver now, dancing and sparkling in the beams of the broad-faced moon.
Where Tom Morrison stopped at last, beneath the willow, was his evening’s work—a small, dark trench, lying amidst the mellow, sweet-scented, newly-turned earth; and here, upon his own land, he was about to lay the dead—to be sown in corruption, to be raised in incorruption—in soil unconsecrated, and without the rites of the Church.
Unconsecrated? No, it was consecrated by the loving tears that bedewed the earth, and fell upon the little white coffin as it was tenderly lowered to its resting-place; and, failing rites, the stricken pair kneeled on either side in the soft mould, and, joining hands, prayed that they might meet again.
Tom’s words were few; but simple and earnest was his prayer as ever fell from the lips of man; while, kneeling at the foot of the grave was poor Budge, who only burst forth with a sob when all was over. For the mother stayed while the earth was reverently drawn over the cold bed, till a little hillock of black soil lay silvered by the dropping moonbeams falling through the willow boughs.
It was poor Budge who laid her offering—a bunch of daisies—upon the little grave, while Tom led his trembling wife back to their desolate home.