I saw the coffin marked with the brass plate of old Captain Jeremiah Hawes, and the coffin of “Mis’ Hawes,” his wife, and, on the lowest tier, that of the New Captain.
“Where is Mattie?” I asked.
The judge waved his hand ambiguously toward the bay. I took it to mean that she had not been honored with the sanctuary of the family vault. In the end, she was not a Hawes. Without saying anything more, it seemed as if we understood each other. Mattie had been buried in unhallowed ground.
Not that the New Captain was ever anything more than an infidel. I was indignant when I realized how much better he had fared than she. Some one, probably the judge, had white-washed his soul in spite of his preferences and given him a Christian burial. With Mattie things were different, in death even as in life. I did not dare to inquire any further for fear I would learn that they had taken her poor drowned body and thrown it under a heap of stones at a crossroads. Customs of the Old World and superstitions of the New lingered in this neck of New England where, not too many years ago, forlorn old women had been burned as witches.
The New Captain’s great iron box was strong and solid; it did not look as if anything could get out of it or ever had. The judge and I stood staring at it.
“I saw him myself,” the judge said, “before the lid was fastened down, and he had been lying in that room a week then, like he asked to in his will. He was dead all right; you didn’t need to look at him.”
“Was there a funeral service?”
“You bet there was. The Old Captain’s parson saw to that—Brother Jimps—gone now, too. There was some talk against it. The new minister he said he wouldn’t ’a’ done it, but I knew enough not to ask him.”
The judge chuckled over his grim recollections.
“Yes, I saw the thing was all done proper at the time; but I guess it wouldn’t be going outside of my rights any if I was to open the coffin now and set your mind at rest.”