"Oh, Tobias!" she murmured.
"I am frank to say," the lightkeeper declared, "that I'm going down there to Batten with expectations. Uncle Jethro is dead, and I cal'late to show respect to his memory. If the sermon is long I'll likely go to sleep during it. But I don't cal'late to sleep none in Judge Waddams' office when the will is being read."
His perfectly frank acknowledgment shocked Miss Heppy. But that was Tobias Bassett's way. He gave no hostage to Mrs. Grundy in any particular. No odor of hypocrisy clung to anything he did or said. If he had ever occasion to be untruthful he lied "straight from the shoulder"—without any circumlocution.
In his Sunday clothes, however, Tobias o' Twin Rocks Light was not likely to go to sleep under the dreariest funeral sermon that was ever preached on the Cape. The embrace of the Iron Virgin of the Inquisition could have been little more uncomfortable than that of his Sunday suit.
The Mariners' Chapel at Batten was set upon one of the loneliest sites to be found along the entire length of the Cape's ocean shore. Weather-bleached dunes and flats on which sparse herbage grew surrounded the chapel. But the building was centrally located and tapped a good-sized community. The gulls clamored about its squat bell-tower and the marching sands drifted against its foundation. The northeasterly windows which overlooked the sea were ground by the flying sand to a pebbly roughness. The high roof beams were hand-hewn, for the chapel had weathered at least four-score years. The pews were high-backed pens with doors. The old-time worshipper in the Puritan House of God preferred to be shut in from his neighbors, and he likewise kept his religion a matter of close communion. The uncushioned seats were the most uncomfortable that the ingenuity of man could devise.
There had been no service at the house. Such a thing as a private funeral was not known in this community. A funeral is one of the most important incidents in the existence of Cape Cod folks, and at Batten (which was a clam-digging village) was held at high sea. It was expected of the minister that he should preach a full and complete sermon over the remains.
The bustling old undertaker, in shabby black broadcloth and with his iron-grey hair brushed forward over his ears, giving him the look of a super-serious monkey, marshaled the audience after the sermon to march down one aisle past the coffin and out the other aisle.
The grim, mahogany-hued face of Captain Jethro Potts, the lines of which even the touch of death could not soften, confronted his neighbors from the coffin. His countenance was not composed as the dead usually are; but looked as though he lay there in ambush, ready to jump out at one. There was even the glitter of a beady eyeball behind the thin lashes drawn down over his eye.
"He looks mighty like he was a-watchin' of ye," observed the undertaker to Tobias. "I never see a corp' more nateral."
"You said it. 'Nateral' is right," agreed the lightkeeper. "I cal'late Uncle Jethro has got something to spring on his rel'tives. He's watchin' of 'em yet."