The Settlers at Home Part 17

"Where? How?"

"We will choose the prettiest place we can find, and the quietest."

"I wish the pastor was here," said Mildred. "I never saw a funeral, except pa.s.sing one in the road sometimes."

"We need not be afraid of doing wrong about the funeral, dear. We must make some kind of little coffin; and Roger will help me to dig a grave, and if we have no pastor to say prayers, you and I know that in our hearts we shall be thanking G.o.d for taking our little brother to be safe and happy with him."

"And then I may plant some flowers upon his grave, may not I? And that will bring the bees humming over it. How fond he was of going near the hives, to hear the bees hum! Where shall his grave be?"

"Under one of the trees, one of the shadiest."

"Oh, dear--here comes Ailwin! I wish she would let us alone."

Ailwin was crying too much to speak. She took the body from Mildred's arms with a gentle force, kissing the little girl as she did so. She covered up the baby's face with her ap.r.o.n as she walked away.

The children went among the trees to fix on a spot for the grave. They found more than one that they liked; but suddenly remembered that the ground was hard, and that they had no spade, nor any tool with which they could make a deep hole.

Oliver was greatly disturbed at this,--more than he chose to show when he saw how troubled his sister also was. After thinking for some time to no purpose,--feeling that he could not bear to commit the body to the foul flood, and remembering with horror how many animals were scratching up the earth all over the Red-hill, where the ground was not too hard, and how many odious birds of prey were now hovering in the air, at all hours,--after thinking over these things with a heavy heart, he begged Mildred to go home to Ailwin, and to ask Roger to come to him in the wood, to consult what must be done.

Mildred readily went: but she hardly liked to speak to Roger when she saw him. He was watching, with a sulky air, what Ailwin was doing, as she bent over the mattress. His eyes were red with crying; but he did not seem the more gentle for that. When Mildred had given her message, he moved as if he thought it a great trouble to go; but Mildred then suspected what was indeed the truth,--that he was unhappy at the child's death, and was ashamed of appearing so, and put on a gruff manner to hide it. Seeing this, the little girl ran after him, as he sauntered away, put her hand in his, and said,--

"Do help Oliver all you can. I know how he would have tried to help you if George had been your little brother."

"'Tis all the same as if he had been," muttered Roger. "I'm sure I am just as sorry."

"Are you, indeed?" said Mildred, her eyes now filling with tears.

Roger could not bear to see that; and he hastened away. Mildred found a great change when she looked on the baby's face again. The eyes were quite closed, and Ailwin had tied a bandage round his head,--under the chin, and among the thick hair which used to curl so prettily, but which had hung straight and damp since he had been ill. He was now strangely dressed, and laid out straight and stiff. He did not look like Geordie; and now Mildred began to know the dreary feelings that death brings into families. She longed for Oliver to come home; and would have gone to see what he was about, but that she did not like to leave the tent and the body while Ailwin was busy elsewhere, which was now the case.

When, at length, the boys returned, they reported that, for many reasons, there could not be a grave under the trees, as they would have liked. They had hopes of making one which would save the body from the flood, and would serve at least till the day (if that day ever came) when it might be removed to some churchyard. They had no tools to dig a deep hole with; and if there was a hole, it must be deep: but they found they could excavate a s.p.a.ce in the bank, under the trunk of one of the large buried forest-trees. They could line this hole with hewn stones brought from the shattered wall of the house, and could close it in also with a stone,--thus making the s.p.a.ce at once a coffin and a grave, as secure from beast or bird of prey as any vault under any church-wall.

Oliver had found among the ruins one of the beautiful carved stones which he had always admired as it surmounted the doorway of their home.

With this he meant to close in the little vault. At some future time, if no one should wish to disturb the remains, ivy might be led over the face of the bank, and about this sculptured stone; and then, he thought, even those who most loved little George could not wish him a better grave.

CHAPTER TEN.

GRAVES IN THE LEVELS.

Oliver so much wished that the next day (Sunday, and the day of his little brother's funeral) should be one of rest and decent quiet, that he worked extremely hard, as long as the light lasted, and was glad of all the help the rest of the party could give.

To make an excavation large enough for the body was no difficult task;-- the earth being soft, and easily removed from the trunks, roots, and branches of buried trees, which seemed to run all through the interior of the bank. But the five stones with which the grave was to be lined were of considerable thickness; and Oliver chose to have them nicely fitted in, that no living creature should be able to enter this place sacred to the dead.

How astonished were they all to find that this was already a place of the dead! While Ailwin was holding one of the stones against one end of the excavation, and Oliver was striking and fixing it with the great hammer, Roger was emptying out soil from the other end. He exclaimed that he had come upon some large thing made of leather.

"I dare say you have," said Ailwin. "There are all manner of things found by those who dig in the Levels--except useful things, I mean. No one ever knew anything useful come out of these odd places."

"You are wrong there," said Roger. "I have got useful things myself from under the carr, that brought me more money than any fish and fowl I ever took out of the ponds on it. Uncle and I found some old red earthenware things..."

"Old red earthenware!" exclaimed Ailwin. "As if old earthenware was better than fish and fowl, when there is so much new to be had now-a-days! My uncle is a sailor, always going between this and Holland; and he says the quant.i.ty of ware they bring over in a year will hold victuals for all Lincolns.h.i.+re. And Dutch ware does not cost above half what it did in my grandfather's time: so don't you be telling your wonderful tales, Roger. We sha'n't believe them."

"Well, then don't. But I say again, uncle Stephen and I took gold for the old red ware we got out of a deep hole in the carr."

"Very likely, indeed. I wonder who has gold to throw away in that manner. However, I don't say but there may be such. 'Fools and their money are soon parted,' some folks say."

"Who gave you the gold?" asked Oliver.

"You may ask that," said Roger; "but you may not believe me when I tell you. You know the Earl of Arundel comes sometimes into these parts.

Well,--it was he."

"When? Why?"

"He often comes down to see the Trent, having the care of the forests upon it: and one time he stopped near here, on his way into Scotland, about some business. They say he has a castle full of wonderful things somewhere."

"What sort of things?" asked Ailwin. "Horn spoons and pewter drinking-mugs to his old red earthenware?"

"Perhaps," replied Roger, "But I heard nothing of them. What I heard of was old bricks, and stone figures, and all manner of stone jars. Well, a gentleman belonging to the Earl of Arundel chanced to come across us, just after we had found a pitcher or two down in the moss; and he made us go with him to the Earl..."

"You don't mean that you ever saw a lord to speak to!" exclaimed Ailwin, turning sharp round upon Roger.

"I tell you I did, and uncle too."

Ailwin muttered that she did not believe a word of it; but her altered manner towards Roger at the moment, and ever after, showed that she did.

"He asked us all manner of questions about the Levels," continued Roger:--"I mean about the things that lie in the moss. He did not seem to care about the settlers and the crops, otherwise than in the way of business. All that he did about the earthenware was plainly for his pleasure. He bought all we could find on that spot; and he said if we found any more curiosities at any time, we were ... But I can't stand talking any more."

And Roger glanced with suspicious eyes from the piece of leather (as he called it) that he had met with in the bank to Oliver. He wanted to have the sole benefit of this new discovery.

"And what were you to do, if you found anything more?" asked Ailwin.

"One might easily bury some of the ware my uncle brings, and keep it in the moss till it is well wetted; and then some earl might give one gold for it. Come, Roger, tell me what you were to do with your findings.

You owe it to me to tell me; considering that your people have got away my cloak and warm stockings."

"Look for them in the moss,--you had better," said Roger. "You will find them there or nowhere."

Not a word more would he say of his own concerns.

Oliver did not want to hear more. On being told of the Earl of Arundel's statues and vases, he had, for a moment, longed to see them, and wondered whether there were any alabaster cups in the collection; but his thoughts were presently with George again. He remembered that Mildred had been left long enough alone with the body; and he dismissed Ailwin, saying that he himself should soon have done, it was now growing so dark.

As he worked on silently and thoughtfully, Roger supposed he was observing nothing; and therefore ventured, turning his back on Oliver, to investigate a little more closely the leathern curiosity he had met with. He disengaged the earth more and more, drew something out, and started at what he saw.

"You _have_ found a curiosity," observed Oliver, quietly. "That is a mummy."

"No--'tis a man," exclaimed Roger, in some agitation. "At least it is something like a man. Is not this like an arm, with a hand at the end of it?--a little dried, shrunk, ugly arm. 'Tis not stiff, neither.

Look! It can't be Uncle Stephen, sure--or Nan!"

"No, no: it is a mummy--a human body which has been buried for hundreds and thousands of years."

Roger had never heard of a mummy; and there was no great wonder in that, when even Oliver did not rightly know the meaning of the word. All animal bodies (and not only human bodies) which remain dry, by any means, instead of putrefying, are called mummies.