The Wayne vault lay open to the April sky, and throstles were singing in the stunted trees, as Sexton Witherlee, infirm of step and dreamy of eye, moved softly over the graveyard stones. He stopped when he reached the vault, set down the ladder he was carrying and stood looking at the clean-swept room below.
"'Tis a sweet place, a vault, to my thinking," he muttered. "So trim and peaceable the folk lie, each on his appointed shelf, with never a wrong word betwixt 'em th' twelvemonth through. Ay, 'tis quiet ligging, an' th' storms pass overhead, an' ivery now an' again there's what ye mud call a stir among 'em when a new shelf is filled an' a new neighbour earned. Well, I've seen life a bittock, but I wod swop beds wi' ony o' these, that I wod."
A robin came and perched on the top rung of the ladder, and eyed Sexton Witherlee sideways with a friendliness which long following after the spade had bred.
"What, laddie, dost think I'm delving?" said the Sexton, chuckling feebly. "Nay, there's to be a better burying this morn nor raw earth gives a man. 'Tis bricks an' mortar, robin, an' a leaded coffin for sich as Wayne o' Marsh.—Well, then, bide a bit till I've straightened all up down here, an' then I'll scrat thee up a worm or two for thy dinner."
He reached down one stiffened leg, twisted the ladder from side to side to make sure that it was safe, and began his slow descent into the vault. He passed his hand lightly over the stone doors that hid the shelves—lightly, and as if he loved each separate entry in this Book of Death. And all the while he talked to himself, soft and slow.
"There's old Tom Wayne put to bed there—he war a rum 'un an' proper, they say, though he war dead a hundred year afore my time—an' yond's Ralph Wayne's spot—well, he lived hot an' he lived fast, did Ralph Wayne, an' he died at two-score, an' so saved a mort o' sweating an' unthankfulness. An' now there's th' Maister come to join 'em; I mind burying his wife ten years agone—ten years!—an' him to hev lived wi' all his troubles until now. It 'ull by my turn next, I'm thinking—th' young 'uns come an' they go, an' it doan't hold to reason that Sexton Witherlee should be spared to bury 'em for iver."
A broom stood in one corner of the vault, fashioned of heather-fagots bound to a stout handle of ash. Witherlee took the broom in his hands, and began to sweep up the rubble that lay about the floor.
"Moiling an' toiling, that's all a man addles by keeping th' life quick i' him. I'm faired shamed o' living when I come among so many decent, quiet bodies—ay, fair shamed," murmured the Sexton, and rested on his broom, and looked up to find a broad face and a sturdy pair of shoulders hanging over the edge of the vault.
"How's trade, Sexton?" said the newcomer.
"Brisk, Jonas, brisk."