“You know what you mean, perhaps, but I do not,” I answered, quite gently, being troubled by his words and the fear of having tried to hurry him; “but you should not say what you have said, Jacob Rigg, to me, your master's daughter, if you only meant to be joking. Is this the place to joke with me?”
I pointed to all that lay around me, where I could not plant a foot without stepping over my brothers or sisters; and the old man, callous as he might be, could not help feeling for—a pinch of snuff. This he found in the right-hand pocket of his waistcoat, and took it very carefully, and made a little noise of comfort; and thus, being fully self-assured again, he stood, with his feet far apart and his head on one side, regarding me warily. And I took good care not to say another word.
“You be young,” he said at last; “and in these latter days no wisdom is ordained in the mouths of babes and sucklings, nor always in the mouths of them as is themselves ordained. But you have a way of keeping your chin up, miss, as if you was gifted with a stiff tongue likewise. And whatever may hap, I has as good mind to tell 'e.”
“That you are absolutely bound to do,” I answered, as forcibly as I could. “Duty to your former master and to me, his only child—and to yourself, and your Maker too—compel you, Jacob Rigg, to tell me every thing you know.”
“Then, miss,” he answered, coming nearer to me, and speaking in a low, hoarse voice, “as sure as I stand here in God's churchyard, by all this murdered family, I knows the man who done it!”
He looked at me, with a trembling finger upon his hard-set lips, and the spade in his other hand quivered like a wind vane; but I became as firm as the monument beside me, and my heart, instead of fluttering, grew as steadfast as a glacier. Then, for the first time, I knew that God had not kept me living, when all the others died, without fitting me also for the work there was to do.
“Come here to the corner of the tower, miss,” old Jacob went on, in his excitement catching hold of the sleeve of my black silk jacket. “Where we stand is a queer sort of echo, which goeth in and out of them big tombstones. And for aught I can say to contrairy, he may be a-watching of us while here we stand.”
I glanced around, as if he were most welcome to be watching me, if only I could see him once. But the place was as silent as its graves; and I followed the sexton to the shadow of a buttress. Here he went into a deep gray corner, lichened and mossed by a drip from the roof; and being, both in his clothes and self, pretty much of that same color, he was not very easy to discern from stone when the light of day was declining.
“This is where I catches all the boys,” he whispered; “and this is where I caught him, one evening when I were tired, and gone to nurse my knees a bit. Let me see—why, let me see! Don't you speak till I do, miss. Were it the last but one I dug? Or could un 'a been the last but two? Never mind; I can't call to mind quite justly. We puts down about one a month in this parish, without any distemper or haxident. Well, it must 'a been the one afore last—to be sure, no call to scratch my head about un. Old Sally Mock, as sure as I stand here—done handsome by the rate-payers. Over there, miss, if you please to look—about two land-yard and a half away. Can you see un with the grass peeking up a'ready?”
“Never mind that, Jacob. Do please to go on.”