Castle Magee was a village of about six cottages and as many bigger houses; a damp, mouldy place, that always impressed the children with a sense of hunger and death. They rarely saw anyone about but the sexton, and he seemed to be perpetually at work digging graves in the churchyard. Then, too, there was no shop, and they had no friends in the village, and after the long walk from home all that could be hoped for was a turnip out of the fields. The church, surrounded by yew-trees, stood in the middle of the village. The whitewashed walls of the Parsonage blinked through an avenue of the same trees. Lull said the church was a Presbyterian meeting-house, and on Sundays people came from miles round, and sang psalms without any tunes, and the minister preached a sermon two hours long, and then everybody ate sandwiches in their pews, and the minister preached another sermon two hours longer.
The children had often climbed up, and looked in at the church windows, and the cold, bare inside and the square boxes for pews had added to their dreary impressions of the place.
If it had not been for the snowdrops they would never have gone near Castle Magee; but at the right time of year the churchyard was a white drift of these flowers, and the sexton had often given them leave to pick as many as they pleased. With a big bunch of snowdrops Jane felt she could go straight home. Dinner would be over, of course, by that time, but there would still be the afternoon to give to the new pigeon-house. And how pleased her mother would be with the flowers. All Jane's bad temper disappeared at the thought, and she would tie up two little bunches with ivy leaves at the back for Fly and Honeybird. She skipped along the road, making up romances to herself to while away the three long miles. She was going to a ball in a blue satin dress trimmed with pearls; then it was a dinner, and she wore black velvet and diamonds; then a meet, and she had a green velvet habit, like the picture of Miss Flora Macdonald Lull had nailed on the kitchen wall.
Soon she got tired of these thoughts.
"'Deed, I won't wear any of them things," she muttered; "everybody wears them. I'll just go in my bare skin an' a pair of Lull's ould boots." She laughed, and began to run. As she got near the village the old feeling of hunger, native to the place, reminded her that turnips would now be stacked behind the Parsonage, and she remembered that it would be best to look for an open heap, for the last time she and Mick had broken into one they found they had opened a potato heap by mistake. She laughed as she thought of how cross the old farmer had been when he had caught them filling up the hole again. Luckily, the first heap she came to was open, so, picking out a good big turnip, she went on till she came to the churchyard wall, and sat down there to eat it. The village looked more desolate than usual. The slate roofs of the cottages were still wet with the rain that had fallen in the night, and a cold wind moaned in the yew-trees. There were only a few snowdrops out, and for once the sexton was not to be seen, but a heap of earth at the far corner of the churchyard showed a newly-dug grave. Jane had got through her first slice of turnip when she was startled by the sound of the bell in the church behind her.
One! It went with a harsh clang.
She looked round, but the bell had stopped. She was beginning to think she had imagined it when the bell clanged again. Then another moment's pause and another clang. Jane thought she had never heard anything so queer, when she suddenly remembered what it was. Of course, it was tolling for a funeral. It had tolled three already. Lull said it tolled one for every year of the dead person's life.
Four—five—six—went the bell.
"That might be our wee Honeybird," Jane said to herself, and remembered the slap she had given Honeybird that morning.
Seven—eight.