"Here us be!" cried Mary at length. "A lot o' gals in white dresses biding for the train. Us be in time."
"There be hundreds and millions of 'em," said Peter sleepily.
The road was very dark, but they could see a low wall, and upon the other side what appeared to be a host of dim white figures waiting patiently. They went up to a building and found an iron gate, but the gate was locked, and the house was in darkness. It looked as if the last train had gone, and the station was closed for the night.
"Us mun climb the wall," said Mary. She began to shout at the girls in the white dresses: "Open the gate, some of ye. Open the gate."
There was no reply from the white figures; only the murmuring of the river, and a dreary rustling of dry autumnal foliage. Peter rubbed his eyes and stared, and put his little peg-nose over the wall.
"It bain't the station," he muttered, with a violent belch. "It be a gentleman's garden."
"Aw, Peter, don't ye be so vulish. It be vull o' volks biding to go home."
They climbed the wall, far too sleepy and intoxicated to know they were in the cemetery; and finding themselves upon soft grass they went to sleep, using the mound of a young girl's grave for their bolster, adding their drunken slumbers to the heavier sleep of those who Mary thought were "biding to go home."
About the middle of the night Peter awoke, much refreshed and less absent-minded, and discovered the nature and the dampness of their resting-place. The little man was not in the least dismayed. He aroused Mary with his fist and facetious remarks. "Us be only lodgers. Us bain't come to bide," he said cheerfully.
Mary also saw the fun of the thing. It was a fitting climax to her travelling experiences. Without being at all depressed by her surroundings she said: "Aw, Peter! To think us be sleeping among the corpses like." To the novelty of this experience was to be added the fact that she had slept at last outside her native parish.