"I shall take it," she said, half aloud. "It's wore as thin as thin behind; that and the open socks as I've mended and better-be-mended;" and she thrust them both hastily, as if for fear she should repent, into a tin box, out of which the battered head of John's old horse protruded.
If there was one thing certain in this world, it was that the Noah's ark would not go in unless the horse came out. Mitty tried many ways, and was contemplating them with arms akimbo when John came in.
She showed no surprise at seeing him, and with astonishment John realized that it was only six days since he had left Overleigh. It was actually not yet a week since that far-distant afternoon, separated from the present by such a chasm, when he had lain on his face in the heather, and the deep passions of youth had rent him and let him go. Here at Overleigh time stopped. He came back twenty years older, and the almanac on his writing-table marked six days.
John made the necessary arrangements for the funeral to take place at midnight, according to the Tempest custom, which he knew Colonel Tempest would have been the last to waive. He wrote to tell Di what he had settled, together with the hour and the date. He dared not advise her not to be present, but he remembered the vast concourse of people who had assembled at his father's funeral to see the torchlight procession, and he hoped she would not come.
But Mrs. Courtenay wrote back that her granddaughter was fixed in her determination to be present, that she had reluctantly consented to it, and would accompany her herself. She added in a postscript that no doubt John would arrange for them to stay the night at Overleigh, and they should return to London the next day.
The night of the funeral was exceeding dark and still; so still that many, watching from a distance on Moat-hill, heard the voice saying, "I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live."
And again—
"We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out."
The night was so calm that the torches burned upright and unwavering, casting a steadfast light on church and graveyard and tilted tombstones, on the crowded darkness outside, and on the worn faces of a man and woman who stood together between two open graves.