But without a word of reply, Annie rose, flung her arms
around Brownie's head, kissed the white star on her forehead,
disengaged herself from the grass, and got out of the manger. Auntie
seized her hand with a rough action, but not ungentle grasp, and led
her away to the house. The stones felt very hot to her little bare
feet.
CHAPTER III.
By this time the funeral was approaching the churchyard at a more rapid
pace; for the pedestrians had dropped away one by one, on diverging
roads, or had stopped and retraced their steps. But as they drew near
the place, the slow trot subsided into a slow walk once more. To an
English eye the whole mode would have appeared barbarous. But if the
carved and gilded skulls and cross-bones on the hearse were
ill-conceived, at least there were no awful nodding plumes to make
death hideous with yet more of cloudy darkness; and one of the panels
showed, in all the sunshine that golden rays could yield, the
Resurrection of the Lord--the victory over the grave. And, again, when
they stopped at the gate of the churchyard, they were the hands of
friends and neighbours, and not those of cormorant undertakers and
obscene mutes, that bore the dead man to his grave.
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