“What you laughing at?” the sportsman demanded, as he tenderly stroked his swollen neck.
“Tartures o’ the damned!” Jared gasped. “Sure, if that’s all ’tis, I’ll jack ’asy about it!”
He laughed louder—reckless levity; but I knew that deep in his heart he would be infinitely relieved could he believe—could he only make sure—that the punishment of the wicked was no worse than an eternity of fighting with poisonous insects.
“Ay,” he repeated, ruefully, “if that’s all ’twas, ’twould not trouble me much.”
The graveyard at Battle Harbour is in a sheltered hollow near the sea. It is a green spot—the one, perhaps, on the island—and they have enclosed it with a high board fence. Men have fished from that harbour for a hundred years and more—but there are not many graves; why, I do not know. The crumbling stones, the weather-beaten boards, the sprawling ill-worded inscriptions, are all, in their way, eloquent:
“Sarah Combe died the fourth of August, 1881,
aged 31 years.”
There is another, better carved, somewhat better spelled, but quite as interesting and luminous:
In
Memory of John
Hill who Died
December 30 1890
Aged 34
| Weep not dear Parents For your lost tis my Etarnel gain May May Crist you all take up The crost that we Shuld meat again |