In utter silence and darkness, but hand to hand with her, he at last passed away.
The next few days was a strange and bewildering time to Phebe.
Neighbors were coming and going, and taking the arrangements for the funeral into their own hands, with little reference to her.

The clergyman of the parish, who lived three miles off, rode over the hills to hold a solemn interview with her.

Mrs.Nixey would not leave her alone, and if she could have had her way would have carried her off to her own house.

But this Phebe would not submit to; except the two nights she had been away when she went to the sea-side to break the news of Roland's death to Felicita and her mother, she had never been absent for a night from home.

Why should she be afraid of that quiet, still form, which even in death was dearer to her than any other upon earth?
But Mrs.Nixey walked beside her, next the coffin, when the small funeral procession wound its way slowly over the uplands to the country churchyard, where the deaf and dumb old wood-carver was laid in a grave beside his wife.