These were Sam Trewhella, of course,
and the rest of the funeral-party, that had left the coffin in a nice
shady spot inside the Vicarage garden gate, and come along to assist
the law. They had brought along pretty nearly all the menkind of the
parish beside: but these, being in their work-a-day clothes, didn't
appear, and for a reason you'll learn by and by. All that Bligh saw
was this dismal company of mourners backed by a rabble of
school-children, the little ones lining the shore and staring at him
fearsomely with their fingers in their mouths.
For the moment Bligh must have thought himself dreaming. But there
they stood, the men in black and the crowd of children, and my
grandfather with the stretcher ready, and the green woods so quiet
all round. And there he stood up to the ribs in water, and the tide
and his temper rising.
"Look here, you something-or-other yokels," he called out, "if this
is one of your village jokes, I promise you shall smart for it.
Leave the spot this moment, fetch that idiot out of the boat, and
take away the children. I want to dress, and it isn't decent!"
"Mounseer," answers my grandfather, "I dare say you've a-done it for
your country; but we've a-caught you, and now you must go to prison--
wee, wee, to preeson," he says, lisping it in a Frenchified way so as
to make himself understood.
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