harnessed a yoke of oxen to a rough wooden cart. Neither did this take
them long. Bates worked with a nervousness that almost amounted to
trembling. He had in his mind the dispute with the girl which he felt
sure awaited him.

In this fear also he was destined to be disappointed. When he went to
the inner room the coffin lay as he had left it, ready for its journey,
and on the girl's bed in the corner the thick quilts were heaped as
though the sleeper, had tossed restlessly. But now there was no
restlessness; he only saw her night-cap beyond the quills; it seemed
that, having perhaps turned her face to the wall to weep, she had at
last fallen into exhausted and dreamless slumber.

Bates and Saul carried out the coffin eagerly, quietly. Even to the
callous and shallow mind of Saul it was a relief to escape a contest
with an angry woman. They set the coffin on the cart, and steadied it
with a barrel of potash and sacks of buckwheat, which went to make up
the load. By a winding way, where the slope was easiest, they drove the
oxen between the trees, using the goad more and their voices as little
as might be, till they were a distance from the house. Some trees had
been felled, and cut off close to the ground, so that a cart might pass
through the wood; this was the only sign of an artificial road. The fine
powdered snow of the night before had blown away.

When they reached the beach again, the eastern sky, which had been
grey, was all dappled with cold pink, and the grey water reflected it
somewhat. There was clearer light on the dark green of the pine-covered
hills, and the fine ice coating on stone and weed at the waterside had
sharper glints of brilliancy.