well kept and frequented by traffic. The glimmering light appeared to come from the precise point where the roads intersected.
'I think I know what that mid mean!' one of the group remarked.
They stood a few moments, discussing the probability of the light having orgin in an event of which rumours had reached them, and resolved to go up the hill.
Approaching the high land their conjectures were strengthened. Long-Ash Lane cut athwart them, right and left; and they saw that at the junction of the four ways, under the handpost, a grave was dug, into which, as the choir drew nigh, a corpse had just been thrown by the four Sidlinch men employed for the purpose. The cart and horse which had brought the body thither stood silently by.
The singers and musicians from Chalk-Newton halted, and looked on while the gravediggers shovelled in and trod down the earth, till, the hole being filled, the latter threw their spades into the cart, and prepared to depart.
'Who mid ye be a-burying there?' asked Lot Swanhills in a raised voice. 'Not the sergeant?'
The Sidlinch men had been so deeply engrossed in their task that they had not noticed the lanterns of the Chalk-Newton choir till now.
'What—be you the Newton carol-singers?' returned the representatives of Sidlinch.
'Ay, sure. Can it be that it is old Sergeant Holway you've a-buried there?'
''Tis so. You've heard about it, then?'
The choir knew no particulars—only that he had shot himself in his apple-closet on the previous Sunday. 'Nobody seem'th to know what 'a did it for, 'a b'lieve? Leastwise, we don't know at Chalk-Newton,' continued Lot.
'O yes. It all came out at the inquest.'
The singers drew close, and the Sidlinch men,
