all. His courage shamed the cowards. He quickened the laggards. He
stilled the agony of fear that killed three for every one who died of
the White Death.

For the first time since the minister came to Dour, the kirk-bell did
not ring on Sabbath, for the minister was at the other end of the parish
setting a house in order whence three children had been carried. In the
kirkyard there was the dull rattle of sods. The burying-party consisted
of the roughest rogues in the parish, whom the minister had fetched from
their hiding-holes in the hills.

Up the long roads that led to the kirk on its windy height the scanty
funerals wended their way. For three weeks they say that in the
kirkyard, from dawn to dusk, there was always a grave uncovered or a
funeral in sight. There was no burial service in the kirkyard save the
rattle of the clods; for now the minister had set the carpenters to
work and coffins were being made. But the minister had prayer in all the
houses ere the dead was lifted.

Then he went off to lay hot stones to the feet of another, and to get a
nurse for yet another. For twenty days he never slept and seldom ate,
till the plague was stayed.

The last case was on the 27th of September. Then Abraham Ligartwood
himself was stricken in one of the village hovels, and fell forward
across a sick man's bed. They carried him to the manse of Dour, and wept
as they went. The next day all the men that were alive in the parish of
Dour stood about the minister's grave in the kirkyard on the hill. There
was none there that could pray. But as they were about to separate, some
one, it was never known who, raised the tune of the first Psalm. And the