"This is the sort of early morning that makes an old man like me catch his breath.

And I haven't always been parish clerk and dug graves.

I was schoolmaster till Michaelmas." It was time to commit to the grave the burden which had passed three long weeks on the back of the mare.

Not until this moment did Ralph's hand once relax its firm grip of Betsy's bridle.

Loosing it now, he applied himself to the straps and ropes that bound the coffin.