“Pardon!” said a foreign gentleman, one of the party, who, seeing Caput uncover his head at the grave, had done the same. “But will you have the goodness to tell me what it is we have come here to see?”
“The grave of a very good woman,” was the reply.
Legh Richmond tells us little more. Her love for her Saviour, like the broken alabaster-box of ointment in the hand of another woman of far different life, is the sweet savor that has floated down to us through all these years.
I stooped to picked some bearded grasses from the mound. The sexton bent creakingly to aid me, chattering and grinning. He wore a blue frock over his corduroy trousers: his hands and clothes were stained with clay; his sunken cheeks looked like old parchment.
“’A wisht ’a ’ad flowers to gi’ ’e, leddy!” he said. “’A dit troy for one wheele to keep um ’ere. But ’a moight plant um ivery day, and ’ee ud be all goane ’afore tummorrer. He! he! he! ’A—manny leddies cooms ’ere for summat fro’ e’ grave. ’A burried ’er brother over yander!” chucking a pebble to show where—“’a dit! ’E larst of ’e fomily. ’Ees all goane! And ’a’m still aloive and loike to burry a manny more! He! he!”
Our homeward route lay by the Dairyman’s cottage, a long mile from the church. When the coffin of Elizabeth, borne by neighbors’ hands, was followed by the mourners, also on foot, funeral hymns were sung, “at occasional intervals of about five minutes.” As we bowled along the smooth road, Prima, sitting behind me, read aloud from the shabby little volume a description of the surrounding scene, that might, for accuracy of detail, have been written that day:
“A rich and fruitful valley lay immediately beneath. It was adorned with corn-fields and pastures, through which a small river winded in a variety of directions, and many herds grazed upon its banks. A fine range of opposite hills, covered with grazing flocks, terminated with a bold sweep into the ocean, whose blue waves appeared at a distance beyond. Several villages, churches and hamlets were scattered in the valley. The noble mansions of the rich and the lowly cottages of the poor added their respective features to the landscape. The air was mild, and the declining sun occasioned a beautiful interchange of light and shade upon the sides of the hills.”
The annalist adds,—“In the midst of this scene the chief sound that arrested attention was the bell tolling for the funeral of the ‘Dairyman’s Daughter.’”
“A picture by Claude!” commented Caput as the reader paused.
“A draught of old wine that has made the voyage to India and back!” said Dux, our blue-eyed college-boy.