"Nay, I niver get ony harm, as I knaw on, fro' th' little chaps,—though I do shiver whiles, for their curses is summat flairsome to hearken to. Howsiver, curses break no bones, as th' saying is, so I just let 'em clicker, an' I win forrard wi' my digging."
The little woman shivered. "They are cruel, these Brown Folk. They snatch children from the cradle, and carry them down and down, deep under the peat, to work the gold for them. I like the slim ghosties better. Sexton, talk to me of them,—the ghosts of those who lie asleep here; thou hast seen such often?"
"Ay," said the Sexton softly. "I've learned th' feel an' th' speech an' th' throb o' th' kirkyard, Mistress, till I'm friends wi' ivery sleeper of 'em all. Lord Christ, how sweet it is to sit here on a summer's eve, wi' th' moon new-risen ower kirk an' graves—to feel this feckless body o' mine crumple an' shrink, while th' inward fire grows fierce, and bright, and steady. 'Tis then th' ghosties come and slip their thin hands into mine; for th' naked souls o' men are friendly, and 'tis only our lumpish shroud of clay that frights th' sperrits from us. Ay, there's scant room, I'm thinking, for us poor mortals, what wi' Brown Folk below, an' White Folk up aboon."
"Once thou said'st 'twas only the unwed lassies walked. Is it so, Sexton?"
"Nay, there's men-folk, too. I say to myseln, small wonder that th' ghosties stir up and down, time an' time, when them as lig under sod fall to thinking o' th' unquiet things that hev happened just aboon their heads. Look ye, Mistress, how black yond kirk-tower looks at us; 'twas there a Wayne fought, in an older day, agen Anthony Ratcliffe wi' five other Ratcliffes to back him—fought wi' his back to th' tower-wall, and killed four out o' th' six that made agen him, an' sore wounded Anthony an' another. Ay, an' ye mind how Shameless Wayne took toll a while back i' this same spot? An' how Dick Ratcliffe paid his reckoning on th' vault-stone yonder?"
Mistress Wayne shrank from the Sexton as if he had struck her. "Dick Ratcliffe—Dick—what should I know of him?" she murmured. Again the still intensity of face, as she sought the key to that dim past of hers.
But the Sexton was deep in his own reverie; he was thinking, not of the woman to whom Dick Ratcliffe had given an unclean love, but of the new feud that had come to gladden these latter days.
"Is not th' place like to be restless, wi' sich as these lying bedfellows?" he went on, nodding his head in greeting at the lettered stones. "Ay, restless as I am restless, heving followed my trade, through sun an' gloaming an' mid-winter midnight, amang th' wild folk that niver found peace till they came on their last journey to Marshcotes kirkyard.—Theer, theer, Mistress!" he broke off, as the little woman's cry broke sharply into his musings and half awoke him. "I flair ye, but ye need think nowt on 't; an owd chap mun hev his spell o' dithering in an' out amang th' fierce owd tales that tangle and trip up th' one t' other. Yet I praise God that, after all these weak new days, young Wayne o' Marsh hes shown th' owd stuff a-working."
"Sexton, Sexton!" The woman's eyes, fixed on the vault-stone below, were sane now, and her voice not like at all to the childish pipe which Witherlee had grown to love. "I have tried so hard to understand—and now I know—and would God I could forget again."
Witherlee made as if to put an arm about her, so wishful of comfort she seemed; but he withdrew, feeling that her grief was over-terrible for such rough consolation as he had to offer. Instead, he filled his pipe and lit it, and waited till she found more to tell him.