It's a flat grey stone. There's many more like it, set along
on rows. It seemed a neighbourly sort of place to rest in, if a man
chose, after a roaming life. I stood there till the shadow came along
across the churchyard from the church steeple. Then it grew dusk, and
it seemed like now and then I heard a bell tolling. Aye, it was like
a bell tolling. It seemed to me I could hear it. But there was no bell.
Then I came out and went to look for Andrew McCulloch's house. It
stands north of the Green, looking across the churchyard. I knocked
at the door, then I backed off the step, when it opened, thinking
there must be a mistake about the date, and maybe inscriptions on
gravestones was exaggerated; there was a girl in the doorway that
looked and acted like Madge Pemberton complete. Moreover an old
seaman falling off the doorstep didn't seem to upset her balmy
calmness. She says:
"What is it?"
"It's Tom Buckingham come home," I says. "But I guess you're the
next generation," and I asked for Andrew McCulloch.
He's a red-faced man with short side whiskers, a chunky, fussy, and
hot-tempered man, but whether Madge Pemberton had managed him, or
whether he'd worn her out, I couldn't make up my mind about the
likelihood.
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