One of the
dark green shutters was unfastened, and stood out at right-angles
from the wall--a token of desertion. On the diamond panes of the
upper windows, round which the long tendrils of grape-vines were
drooping, the gorgeous sunset was reflected, making the glass gleam
as though a hundred little fires were playing behind it. When I
reached the door, the paint of which seemed far more cracked with the
sun than it had looked a few weeks before, I found on knocking that
the cottage was empty. I did not linger, but went at once into the
town to inquire about her.
In place of giving me the information I was panting for, the whole
town came cackling round me with comments on the organist and the
sacrilege. I turned into the 'Fishing Smack' inn, a likely place to
get what news was to be had, and found the asthmatical old landlord
haranguing some fishermen who were drinking their ale on a settle.
'It's my b'lief,' said the old man, 'that Tom was arter somethink
else besides that air jewelled cross. I'm eighty-five year old come
next Dullingham fair, and I regleck as well as if it wur yisterdy
when resur-rectionin' o' carpuses wur carried on in the old
churchyard jes' like one o'clock, and the carpuses sent up to Lunnon
reg'lar, and it's my 'pinion as that wur part o' Tom's game, dang
'im; and if I'd a 'ad _my_ way arter the crouner's quest, he'd never
a' bin buried in the very churchyard as he went and blast-phemed.
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