"It is all in the hands of God," she said. "He is only taking back what He sent us."
There was silence in the room for a long while. My father and mother wept, and I was afraid of something which was beyond my understanding.
"Will Dan ever come back again?" I asked.
"Hush, dearie!" said my mother.
"It will take a lot of money to bury the poor boy," said my father. "It costs a good penny to rear one, but it's a bad job when one is taken away."
I had once seen an old woman buried—"Old Nan," the beggarwoman. For many years she had passed up and down Glenmornan Road, collecting bottles and rags, which she paid for in blessings and afterwards sold for pence. Being wrinkled, heavy-boned, and bearded like a man, everyone said that she was a witch. One summer Old Nan died, and two days later she was carried to the little graveyard. I played truant from school and followed the sweating men who were carrying the coffin on their shoulders. They seemed to be well-pleased when they came in sight of the churchyard and the cold silent tombstones.
"The old witch was as heavy as lead," I heard the bearers say.
They set down their burden and dug a hole in the soft earth, throwing up black clay and white bones to the surface with their shovels. The bones looked like those of sheep which die on the hills and are left to rot. The air was heavy with the humming of bees, and a little brook sang a soft song of its own as it hurried past the graveyard wall. The upturned earth had a sickly smell like mildewed corn. Some of the diggers knew whose bone this was and whose that was, but they had a hard argument about a thigh-bone before Old Nan was put into the earth. Some said that the thigh-bone belonged to old Farley Kelly, who had died many years before, and others said that it belonged to Farley's wife. I thought it a curious thing that people could not know the difference between a man and a woman when dead. While the men were discussing the thigh-bone it was left lying on the black clay which fringed the mouth of the grave, and a long earth-worm crawled across it. A man struck at the worm with his spade and broke the bone into three pieces. The worm was cut in two, and it fell back into the grave while one of the diggers threw the splinters of bone on top of it. Then they buried Old Nan, and everyone seemed very light-hearted over the job. Why shouldn't they feel merry? She was only an old witch, anyhow. But I did not feel happy. The grave looked a cold cheerless place and the long crawling worms were ugly.
So our poor Dan would go down into the dark earth like Old Nan, the witch! The thought frightened me, and I began to cry with my father and mother, and we were all three weeping still, but more quietly, when the first dim light of the lonely dawn came stealing through the window panes.
Two old sisters, Martha and Bride, lived next door. My mother asked me to go out and tell them about Dan's death. I ran out quickly, and I found both women up and at work washing dishes beside the dresser. Martha had a tin basin in her hand, and she let it drop to the floor when I delivered my message. Bride held a jug, and it seemed for a moment that she was going to follow her sister's example, but all at once she called to mind that the jug was made of delft, so she placed it on the dresser, and both followed me back to my home. Once there they asked many questions about Dan, his sickness and how he came to die. When they had heard all, they told of several herbs and charms which would have cured the illness at once. Dandelion dipped in rock water, or bogbine[2] boiled for two hours in the water of the marsh from which it was plucked, would have worked wonders. Also seven drops of blood from a cock that never crowed, or the boiled liver of a rabbit that never crossed a white road, were the very best things to give to a sick person. So they said, and when Bride tried to recollect some more certain cures Martha kept repeating the old ones until I was almost tired of listening to her voice.