“There’s one thing they haven’t changed, the private buryin’-plot.”
“Family?”
“Hogg’s there, all right, an’ never a parson in the countryside dared to speak to God about his soul, when they laid him there. His nephew, too, that was as black-hearted as himself. But the rest of the graves has got no headstones.”
“Slaves?”
“Them as he kept for his own service an’ killed in his tantrums. Nobody knows how many. You can see the bend of the creek where they lie, from the road, and the old willows that lean over ’em.”
“Cheerful sort of person the late Mr. Hogg seems to have been. Any relics of his trade in the house?”
“Relics? You may say so! His old pistols, and compasses, guns, nautical instruments, and the leaded whalebone whip that they used to say he slept with. They’ve got ’em hung on the walls now for ornyments. Ornyments! If they’d seen ’em as I’ve seen ’em, they’d sink the dummed things in a hundred fathom o’ clean sea.”
“Sailor Smith was cabin-boy on one of the old Hogg fleet one voyage,” explained Elder Dennett.
“God forgive me for it!” said the old man. “There they hang; and with ’em the chains and—”
“Isn’t that lamp finished yet?” demanded Kent, turning sharply upon Elder Dennett.