children that the passage must have been well nigh without pain.
"And if ever there was a good man fit to be taken suddenly, it was
he," she added. "He be in a happier place than this has been to him
since your good mother was took."

Several of the men had accompanied her, and after some consultation,
it was decided that the burial had better take place that very night,
even though there was no time to make a coffin.

"Many an honest man will be in that same case," said Harry Blane, the
smith, "if they come to blows down there."

"And He to Whom he is gone will not ask whether he lies in a coffin,
or has the prayers said over him," added Goody, "though 'tis pity on
him too, for he always was a man for churches and parsons and
prayers."

"Vain husks, said the pious captain," put in Oates.

"Well," said Harry Blane, "those could hardly be vain husks that made
John Kenton what he was. Would that the good old times were back
again; when a sackless man could not be shot down at his own door for
nothing at all."

Reverently and carefully John Kenton's body was borne to the
churchyard, where he was laid in the grave beside his much loved
wife. No knell was rung: Elmwood, lying far away over the hill side
in the narrow wooded valley with the river between it and the camp,
had not yet been visited by any of the Royalist army, but a midnight
toll might have attracted the attention of some of the lawless