Chapter Three.

A few weeks later John Musgrave set out across the fields in search of the vicar. The vicar on that particular morning was engaged in a search of quite another description, a search which necessitated the company of his sexton, armed with the iron rod with which he prodded in the moundless graveyard where the poor of the parish lay sleeping, to discover where he might, without disturbing an older resident, dig a grave for a fresh interment.

The nature of the soil in the Moresby churchyard was such that it was quite safe, after the lapse of a certain number of years, to bury the present generation in the resting-places of their predecessors. There were no headstones to suggest ownership in this little acre of the dead; and, owing to a whim of the old squire, who during his lifetime had ruled the parish with the despotism of an autocrat, the graves had been dug level with the rest of the ground. Since the advent of the present vicar mounds were insisted upon, and headstones encouraged; so that a man might feel assured when he was laid to rest that his resting-place would remain undisturbed. The old order was changing, even in the matter of interments.

For a while Robert prodded unsuccessfully; wherever he drove his rod in, after a few feet of solid earth it sank suddenly into the unresisting depths of an uncollapsed grave.

“Time most o’ these ’ad a failed in,” he grumbled. “It grows more difficult to find a spot wi’ each fresh buryin’.”

“Try here,” suggested the vicar.

Robert drove his rod in once again. To the depth of about six feet it pierced firm, resisting soil.

“Reckon that’s got it, sir,” he said, as he drew the rod out from the ground. “I’ll carry this back along, an’ fetch my spade.”

At this moment the vicar looked up and beheld John Musgrave bearing towards him. He stepped off the grass, where the quiet dead lay unmarked beneath his feet, and went to meet him.

“Are you busy?” Mr Musgrave asked, turning, and falling into step with him as he walked along the broad gravelled path beneath the scanty shade of the thinning trees.

“Not particularly. I have time to spare you, if you want me. We’ve a funeral this afternoon.”

“Yes. Blackmoor, of course; Martha informed me he was to be buried to-day. Mrs Blackmoor assists Martha in the 

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