knew best who “kept company” and who were only “walking out” in Argyle. For the young have no fear in making love among the dead. And these had been dead so very long that the ever-lasting pea and the clematis and the foxglove had taken railings and headstones for their own, and wedded with the gorse and briar to give birth to new life.
“But that makes no odds,” said Steve. “Bein’ miners, it’s ten ter one these ain’t their right names at all. There was lots ran under false colours in the early days—an’ some do it now.”
He knelt on a wooden slab, scratching the green moss from it with his finger-nail, and his Sunday coat was tight on his shoulders. The girl who had ordered this spoke with a catch in her throat:
“Don’t! Oh, don’t say that! Poor things! Here’s ‘Of your mercy pray for the soul’—suppose it was the wrong soul, after all?”
Steve sat back on his heels, and looked up. No other man on Mains had his reach of arm or his power in a fight. But his heart was as big as his body, and as tender as that was tough.
“There ain’t any souls as ’ud be the worse for a prayer from you, Maiden,” he said.
Maiden was slim and sweet and supple as a manuka-slip. Her hat was pushed back to a
