Ch. 4: The Grave By the Handpost

I never pass through Chalk-Newton without turning to regard the
neighbouring upland, at a point where a lane crosses the lone straight
highway dividing this from the next parish; a sight which does not fail
to recall the event that once happened there; and, though it may seem
superfluous, at this date, to disinter more memories of village history,
the whispers of that spot may claim to be preserved.

It was on a dark, yet mild and exceptionally dry evening at Christmas-
time (according to the testimony of William Dewy of Mellstock, Michael
Mail, and others), that the choir of Chalk-Newton--a large parish situate
about half-way between the towns of Ivel and Casterbridge, and now a
railway station--left their homes just before midnight to repeat their
annual harmonies under the windows of the local population. The band of
instrumentalists and singers was one of the largest in the county; and,
unlike the smaller and finer Mellstock string-band, which eschewed all
but the catgut, it included brass and reed performers at full Sunday
services, and reached all across the west gallery.

On this night there were two or three violins, two 'cellos, a tenor viol,
double bass, hautboy, clarionets, serpent, and seven singers. It was,
however, not the choir's labours, but what its members chanced to
witness, that particularly marked the occasion.

They had pursued their rounds for many years without meeting with any
incident of an unusual kind, but to-night, according to the assertions of
several, there prevailed, to begin with, an exceptionally solemn and
thoughtful mood among two or three of the oldest in the band, as if they
were thinking they might be joined by the phantoms of dead friends who
had been of their number in earlier years, and now were mute in the
churchyard under flattening mounds--friends who had shown greater zest
for melody in their time than was shown in this; or that some past voice
of a semi-transparent figure might quaver from some bedroom-window its
acknowledgment of their nocturnal greeting, instead of a familiar living
neighbour. Whether this were fact or fancy, the younger members of the
choir met together with their customary thoughtlessness and buoyancy.
When they had gathered by the stone stump of the cross in the middle of
the village, near the White Horse Inn, which they made their starting
point, some one observed that they were full early, that it was not yet
twelve o'clock. The local waits of those days mostly refrained from
sounding a note before Christmas morning had astronomically arrived, and
not caring to return to their beer, they decided to begin with some
outlying cottages in Sidlinch Lane, where the people had no clocks, and
would not know whether it were night or morning.