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"Revenge, at first though sweet, Bitter ere long back on itself recoils." The next day was Sunday. True generally went to church half the day at least, with the sexton's family; but Gerty having no bonnet could not go, and True would not leave her. So they spent the morning wandering round among the wharves and looking at the ships, Gerty wearing her old shawl over her head.
They were made in advance, and still there were rarely enough of them, no matter how long or how hard the diggers kept at their work. At Aix-la-Chapelle, for example, in the principal cemetery the sexton's men dug twenty new graves every morning. By evening there would be twenty shaped mounds of clay where the twenty holes had been.
"Well, some one must be doing it," said the other, and passed on his way. Judith had been busy at her washing full two hours longer, when in the doorway of the sexton's house appeared a young fellow, whose figure, almost as broad as it was long, filled the opening, with scarce anything to spare.
I turned to the tree, and began to climb. Now in Bulika the cold after sundown was not so great as in certain other parts of the country especially about the sexton's cottage; yet when I had climbed a little way, I began to feel very cold, grew still colder as I ascended, and became coldest of all when I got among the branches. Then I shivered, and seemed to have lost my hands and feet.
It is the sexton's house, and that church, and those Sunday-school rooms, and those grounds, and everything pertaining to them, are under his care. The father is the sexton, it is true, and attends the furnace and rings the bell; but it is Sallie's care that keeps seat and desk and window so beautifully free from dust or stain. Oh, they live busy lives, and happy ones.
Now that his children had shown that they knew their bits, the demon of mischief flew into him. At the start he put a few straight questions to the sexton's pupils, but being unable to remain serious for long at a time he soon became as waggish as he usually was at his own school. "Of course I know that you have read a deal more than have we who come from the backwoods," said he.
The old man went about for days looking so glum that he quite distressed his wife. "Can't you show them they are in the wrong?" she finally suggested. "How show them? What do you mean?" "I mean that if you know your pupils to be just as clever as the sexton's " "Of course they are!" he struck in. " then you must see that your pupils and his get together for a test examination."
And if all that is not enough to convince you, miss you remember that you told me our old sexton's tale?" "To be sure I do. The first evening I was left alone here. And you have been so kind, there is nothing I would hide from you."
'But it may remind you of one who is still alive, said the child. 'Of twenty that are dead, in connexion with that one who lives, then, rejoined the old man; 'wife, husband, parents, brothers, sisters, children, friends a score at least. So it happens that the sexton's spade gets worn and battered. I shall need a new one next summer.
After the ceremony was over, while they were yet in the church, he called for wine, and drank a loud health to the company, and threw a sop which was at the bottom of the glass full in the sexton's face, giving no other reason for this strange act, than that the sexton's beard grew thin and hungerly, and seemed to ask the sop as he was drinking.
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