For a goodish many years have gone on since that tragedy of poor
Katherine's death, and this is the second appointed Vicar since that
inauspicious time.

Mr. Grame walked across the churchyard, glancing at the inscriptions on
the tombs. Inside the church porch stood the clerk, old John Cale, keys
in hand. Mr. Grame saw him and quickened his pace.

"Have I kept you waiting, Cale?" he cried in his pleasant, considerate
tones. "I am sorry for that."

"Not at all, your reverence; I came afore the time. This here church is
but a step or two off my home, yonder, and I'm as often out here as I be
indoors," continued John Cale, a fresh-coloured little man with pale
grey eyes and white hair. "I've been clerk here, sir, for
seven-and-thirty years."

"You've seen more than one parson out then, I reckon."

"More than one! Ay, sir, more than--more than six times one, I was going
to say; but that's too much, maybe. Let's see: there was Mr. Cartright,
he had held the living I hardly know how many years when I came, and he
held it for many after that. Mr. West succeeded him--the Reverend George
West; then came Thomas Dancox; then Mr. Atterley: four in all. And now
you've come, sir, to make the fifth."

"Did they all die? or take other livings?"

"Some the one thing, sir, and some the other. Mr. Cartright died, he was