The Shadow of a Crime Part 49

"But it's not for me to deny to any Christian a Christian burial--that is to say, as much of it as stands in no need of the book. Sir, I'll be with you in a crack. Go round, sir, to the gate."

Ralph and his companion did as they were bidden, and in a few minutes the old clerk came hurrying towards them from a door at the back of his house that looked into the churchyard.

He had a spade over his shoulder and a great key in his hand.

Putting the key into a huge padlock, he turned back its rusty bolt, and the gate swung stiff on its hinges, which were thick with moss.

Then Ralph, still holding the mare's head, walked into the churchyard with Sim behind him.

"Here's a spot which has never been used," said the old man, pointing to a patch close at hand where long stalks of yarrow crept up through the snow. "It's fresh mould, sir, and on the bright days the sun shines on it."

"Let it be here," said Ralph.

The clerk immediately cleared away the snow, marked out his ground with the edge of the spade, and began his work.

Ralph and Sim, with Betsy, stood a pace or two apart. It was still early morning, and none came near the little company gathered there.

Now and again the old man paused in his work to catch his breath or to wipe the perspiration from his brow. His communicativeness at such moments of intermission would have been almost equal to his reticence at an earlier stage, but Ralph was in no humor to encourage his garrulity, and Sim stood speechless, with something like terror in his eyes. "Yes, we've had no minister since Michaelmas; that, you know, was when the new Act came In," said the clerk.

"What Act?" Ralph asked.

"Why, sir, you never mean that you don't know about the Act of Uniformity?"

"That's what I do mean, my friend," said Ralph.

"Don't know the Act of Uniformity! Have you heard of the Five Mile Bill?"

"No."

"Nor the Test Bill that the Bishop wants to get afoot?"

"No."

"Deary me, deary me," said the clerk, with undisguised horror at Ralph's ignorance of the projected ecclesiastical enactments of his King and country. Then, with a twinkle in the corner of his upward eye as he held his head aside, the old man said,--

"Perhaps your honor has been away in foreign parts?"

Ralph had to decline this respectable cover for his want of familiarity with matters which were obviously vital concerns, and perhaps the subjects of daily conversation, with his interlocutor.

The clerk had resumed his labors. When he paused again it was in order to enlighten Ralph's ignorance on these solemn topics.

"You see, sir, the old 'piscopacy is back again, and the John Presbyters that joined it are snug in their churches, but the Presbyters that would not join it are turned out of their livings.

There--that's the Act of Uniformity."

"The Act of Non-Conformity, I should say," replied Ralph.

"Well, the Jack Presbyters are not to be allowed within five miles of a market town--that's the new Five Mile Bill. And they are not to be made schoolmasters or tutors, or to hold public offices, unless they take the sacrament of the Church--and that's what the Bishop calls his Test Act; but he'll scarce get it this many a long year, say I--no, not he."

The clerk had offered his lucid exposition with the air of one who could afford to be modestly sensible of the superiority of his knowledge.

"And when he does get it he'll want an Act more, so far as I can see,"

said Ralph, "and that's a Burial Act--an Act to bury the Presbyters alive. They'd be full as well buried, I think.".

A shrewd glance from the old man's quick eyes showed that at that moment he had arrived at one of three conclusions--that Ralph himself was a Presbyter or a Roundhead, or both.

"Our minister was a Presbyter," he observed aloud, "and when the Act came in he left his benefice."

But Ralph was not minded to pursue the subject.

The grave was now ready; it had required to be long and wide, but not deep.

The snow was beginning to fall again.

"Hard work on a morning like this," said the clerk, coughing as he threw aside his spade. "This is the sort of early morning that makes an old man like me catch his breath. And I haven't always been parish clerk and dug graves. I was schoolmaster till Michaelmas."

It was time to commit to the grave the burden which had pa.s.sed three long weeks on the back of the mare. Not until this moment did Ralph's hand once relax its firm grip of Betsy's bridle. Loosing it now, he applied himself to the straps and ropes that bound the coffin. When all was made clear, he prepared to lift the body to the ground. It was large and heavy, and required the hands of Sim and the clerk as well.

By their united efforts the coffin was raised off the horse's back and lowered. The three men were in the act of doing this, when Betsy, suddenly freed from the burden which she had carried, pranced aside, looked startled, plunged through the gate, and made off down the road.

"Let her go," said Ralph, and turned his attention once more to what now lay on the ground.

Then Angus Ray was lowered into his last home, and the flakes of snow fell over him like a white and silent pall.

Ralph stood aside while the old man threw back the earth. It fell from the spade in hollow thuds.

Sim crouched beside a stone, and looked on with frightened eyes.

The sods were replaced; there was a mound the more in the little churchyard of Askham, and that was the end. The clerk shouldered his spade and prepared to lock the gate.

It was then they were aware that there came from over their heads a sound like the murmuring of a brook under the leaves of June; like the breaking of deep waters at a weir; like the rolling of foam-capped wavelets against an echoing rock. Look up! Every leafless bough of yonder lofty elder-tree is thick with birds. Listen! A moment, and their song has ceased; they have risen on the wing; they are gone like a cloud Of black rain through the white feathery air. Then silence everywhere.

Was it G.o.d's sign and symbol--G.o.d's message to the soul of this stricken man? G.o.d's truce?

Who shall say it was not!

"A load is lifted off my heart," said Ralph. He was thinking of the terrible night he had spent on the fells. And indeed there was the light of another look in his face. His father had sepulture. G.o.d had shown him this mercy as a sign that what he purposed to do ought to be done. Such was Ralph's reading of the accidental finding of the horse.

They bade good morning to the old man and left him. Then they walked to the angle of the roads where the guidepost stood. The arms were covered with the snow, and Ralph climbed on to the stone wall behind and brushed their letters clear.

"To Kendal." That pointed in the direction from whence they came.

"To Gaskarth."

"That's our road," said Sim.

"No," said Ralph; "_this_ is it--'To Penrith and Carlisle.'"

What chance remained now to Robbie?