After his manner – when no boys were nigh – he condemned himself for an ancient fool, and was about to strike a light, when the sad low sound fell again upon his ears. Determined to know what the meaning of it was, he groped for his hat, and stout oak staff, and entered the churchyard by the little iron gate, the private way from the school premises.
The silence was as deep as the stillness of the dead; but, by the light of the westering moon, he made his way among the white tombstones, and the rubbish of the builders, to the eastern corner where Sir Thomas Waldron lay. His old chief's grave was fair and smooth, and the crisp earth glistened in the moonlight, for the wind had fallen, and a frost was setting in; but a small black figure lay on the crown, close to the bunch of flowers. A low growl met him; and then a dismal wail of anguish, beyond any power of words or tears, trembled along the wan alleys of the dead, and lingered in the shadowy recesses of the church.
"Good little Jess, thou art truer than mankind," said the Sergeant, and marched away to his lonely bed.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE POTATO-FIELD
Live who may, and die who must, the work of the world shall be carried on. Of all these works, the one that can never be long in arrears is eating; and of all British victuals, next to bread, the potato claims perhaps the foremost place. Where the soil is light towards Hagdon Hill, on the property of the Dean and Chapter, potatoes, meet for any dignitary of the Church, could be dug by the ton, in those days. In these democratic and epidemic times, it is hard to find a good potato; and the reason is too near to seek. The finer the quality of fruit or root, the fiercer are they that fall on it; and the nemesis of excellence already was impending. But the fatal blow had not fallen yet; the ripe leaves strewed the earth with vivid gold, instead of reeking weltering smut; and the berries were sound, for boys and girls to pelt one another across the field; while at the lift of the glistening fork across the crumbling ridges, up sprang a cluster of rosy globes, clean as a codlin, and chubby as a cherub.
Farmer John Horner, the senior Churchwarden, and the largest ratepayer on the south side of the Perle, would never have got on as he did, without some knowledge of the weather. The bitter east wind of the previous night, and the keen frost of the morning, had made up his mind that it was high time to lift his best field of potatoes. He had two large butts to receive the filled sacks – assorted into ware and chats – and every working man on the farm, as well as his wife and children, had been ordered to stick at this job, and clear this four-acre field before nightfall. The field was a good step from the village, as well as from Farmer Horner's house; and the lower end (where the gate was) abutted on the Susscot lane, leading from the ford to Perlycross.
It was now All-Hallows day, accounted generally the farewell of autumn, and arrival of the winter. Birds, and beasts, that know their time without recourse to calendar, had made the best use of that knowledge, and followed suit of wisdom. Some from the hills were seeking downwards, not to abide in earnest yet, but to see for themselves what men had done for their comfort when the pinch should come; some of more tender kind were gone with a whistle at the storms they left behind; and others had taken their winter apparel, and meant to hold fast to the homes they understood.
Farmer John, who was getting rather short of breath from the fatness of his bacon, stirred about steadfastly among the rows, exhorting, ordering, now and then upbraiding, when a digger stuck his fork into the finest of the clump. He had put his hunting gaiters on, because the ground would clog as soon as the rime began to melt; and the fog, which still lingered in the hollows of the slopes, made him pull his triple chin out of his comforter to cough, as often as he opened his big mouth to scold. For he was not (like farmers of the present day) too thankful for anything that can be called a crop, to utter a cross word over it.
Old Mr. Channing, the clerk, came in by the gate from the lane, when the sun was getting high. Not that he meant to do much work – for anything but graves, his digging time was past, and it suited him better to make breeches – but simply that he liked to know how things were going on, and thought it not impossible that if he praised the 'taturs, Churchwarden might say – "Bob, you shall taste them; we'll drop you a bushel, when the butt comes by your door." So he took up a root or two here and there, and "hefted it," (that is to say, poised it carefully to judge the weight, as one does a letter for the post) and then stroked the sleek skin lovingly, and put it down gingerly for fear of any bruise. Farmer John watched him, with a dry little grin; for he knew what the old gentleman was up to.
"Never see'd such 'taturs in all my life," Mr. Channing declared with a sigh of admiration. "Talk of varmers! There be nobody fit to hold a can'le to our Measter John. I reckon them would fry even better than they biled; and that's where to judge of a 'tatur, I contends."
"Holloa, Mr. Clerk! How be you then, this fine morning?" The farmer shouted out, as if no muttering would do for him, while he straddled over a two-foot ridge, with the rime thawing down his gaiters. "Glad to see 'e here, old veller. What difference do 'e reckon now, betwixt a man and a 'tatur?"
Farmer John was famous for his riddles. He made them all himself, in conversation with his wife – for he had not married early – and there was no man in the parish yet with brains enough to solve them. And if any one attempted it, the farmer always snubbed him.
"There now, ye be too deep for me!" Mr. Channing made a hole in the ground with his stick, as if Mr. Horner was at the bottom of it. "It requireth a good deal more than us have got, to get underneath your meaning, sir."
"No, Bob, no! It be very zimple, and zuitable too for your trade. A 'tatur cometh out of ground, when a' be ripe; but a man the zame way goeth underground. And a good thing for him, if he 'bideth there, according to what hath been done in these here parts, or a little way up country. No call for thee to laugh, Bob, at thy time of life, when behooveth thee to think over it. But I'll give thee an order for a pair of corduroys, and thou shalt have a few 'taturs, when the butt comes by. Us, as belongs to the Church, is bound to keep her agoing, when the hogs won't miss it! But there, Lord now, I want a score of nose-rings? Have 'e see'd anything of Joe Crang, this morning? We never heer'd nort of his anvil all the time! Reckon Joe had a drop too much at the Bush, last night."
"Why, here a' coom'th!" exclaimed the clerk. "Look, a' be claimbin' of an open gate! Whatever can possess the man? A' couldn't look more mazed and weist, if a hunderd ghostesses was after him?"
Joseph Crang, the blacksmith at Susscot ford, where the Susscot brook passed on its way to the Perle, was by nature of a merry turn, and showed it in his face. But he had no red now, nor even any black about him, and the resolute aspect, with which he shod a horse, or swung a big hammer, was changed into a quivering ghastly stare; his lips were of an ashy blue, like a ring of tobacco smoke; and as for his body, and legs, and clothes, they seemed to have nothing to do with one another.
"What aileth the man?" cried Mr. Channing, standing across, as he had the right to do, after bestraddling so many burials; "Master Joe Crang, I call upon thee to collect thy wits, and out with it."
"Joe, thy biggest customer hath a right to know thy meaning." Farmer John had been expecting to have to run away; but was put in courage by the clerk, and brought up his heels in a line with the old man's.
"Coompany, coompany is all I axes for," the blacksmith gasped weakly, as if talking to himself – "coompany of living volk, as rightly is alive."
"Us be all alive, old chap. But how can us tell as you be?" The clerk was a seasoned man of fourscore years, and knew all the tricks of mortality.
"I wish I wadn't. A'most I wish I wadn't, after all I zee'd last night. But veel of me, veel of me, Measter Channin', if you plaise to veel of me."
"Tull 'e what," the Churchwarden interposed; "gie 'un a drink of zider, Bob. If a' be Joe Crang, a' won't say no to thiccy. There be my own little zup over by the hedge, Joe."
Without any scruple the blacksmith afforded this proof of vitality. The cider was of the finest strain