Chapter 26

XXVI. 'To that last nothing under earth.'

All eyes were turned to the entrance as Stephen spoke, and the ancient-mannered conclave scrutinized him inquiringly.

'Why, 'tis our Stephen!' said his father, rising from his seat; and, still retaining the frothy mug in his left hand, he swung forward his right for a grasp. 'Your mother is expecting ye-- thought you would have come afore dark. But you'll wait and go home with me? I have all but done for the day, and was going directly.'

'Yes, 'tis Master Stephy, sure enough. Glad to see you so soon again, Master Smith,' said Martin Cannister, chastening the gladness expressed in his words by a strict neutrality of countenance, in order to harmonize the feeling as much as possible with the solemnity of a family vault.

'The same to you, Martin; and you, William,' said Stephen, nodding around to the rest, who, having their mouths full of bread and cheese, were of necessity compelled to reply merely by compressing their eyes to friendly lines and wrinkles.

'And who is dead?' Stephen repeated.

'Lady Luxellian, poor gentlewoman, as we all shall, said the under-mason. 'Ay, and we be going to enlarge the vault to make room for her.'

'When did she die?'

'Early this morning,' his father replied, with an appearance of recurring to a chronic thought. 'Yes, this morning. Martin hev been tolling ever since, almost. There, 'twas expected. She was very limber.'

'Ay, poor soul, this morning,' resumed the under-mason, a marvellously old man, whose skin seemed so much too large for his body that it would not stay in position. 'She must know by this time whether she's to go up or down, poor woman.'

'What was her age?'

'Not more than seven or eight and twenty by candlelight. But, Lord! by day 'a was forty if 'a were an hour.'

'Ay, night-time or day-time makes a difference of twenty years to rich feymels,' observed Martin.

'She was one and thirty really,' said John Smith. 'I had it from them that know.'

'Not more than that!'

"A looked very bad, poor lady. In faith, ye might say she was dead for years afore 'a would own it.'

'As my old father used to say, "dead, but wouldn't drop down."'

'I seed her, poor soul,' said a labourer from behind some removed coffins, 'only but last Valentine's-day of all the world. 'A was arm in crook wi' my lord. I says to myself, "You be ticketed Churchyard, my noble lady, although you don't dream on't."'

'I suppose my lord will write to all the other lords anointed in the nation, to let 'em know that she that was is now no more?'

"Tis done and past. I see a bundle of letters go off an hour after the death. Sich wonderful black rims as they letters had-- half-an-inch wide, at the very least.'

'Too much,' observed Martin. 'In short, 'tis out of the question that a human being can