Therefore they interred them by night with no notice of the ceremony.
It was a melancholy scene.

The nave of the great church, lighted only with the torches borne by the six monks of the black Augustines from the neighbouring priory of St.Osyth; the candles, little stars of light, burning far away upon the altar; the bearers of the household of the Claverings and the uncoffined corpses lying on their biers by the edge of the yawning graves; the mourners in their mail; the low voice of the celebrating priest, a Frenchman, Father Nicholas, chaplain to Acour, who hurried through the Latin service as though he wished to be done with it; the deep shadows of the groined roof whereon the rain pattered--such were the features of this interment.

It was done at last, and the poor dead, but a few days before so full of vigour and of passion, were left to their last sleep in the unremembered grave.

Then the mourners marched back to the manor across the Middle Marsh and sought their beds in a sad silence.
Shortly after daybreak they were called from them again by the news that those who had followed Hugh de Cressi had returned.

Quickly they rose, thinking that these came back with tidings of accomplished vengeance, to find themselves face to face with seven starved and miserable men who, all their horses being dead, had walked hither from Dunwich.
The wretched story was learned at length, and then followed that violent scene, which has been told already, when Acour cursed his followers as cowards, and Clavering, sobered perhaps by the sadness of the midnight burial or by the memory of Arnold's words, reproved him.