The funeral was dignified and impressive, and every now and then Reuben glanced across at his son with eyes that said"Wot could Ebenezer have done compared wud this?" All the same, he was disappointed. Somehow he had expected his churchmanship to strike the rector and the curate very favourably; he had expected them metaphorically to fall on his neck; he saw himself as a champion of established Christendom, of tithes and glebes and cosy rectories and "dearly beloved brethren" on Sundays. It was humiliating to find himself ignored, indeed treated as an outsider, simply because he had not been to church for ten years. He had had his children baptised into the Establishment, and now he was burying his son according to its rites, in spite of opposition, even persecution. These parsons were ungrateful, bigoted, and blind.
He staggered blindly along the road. His head swam with rage, and also, it must be confessed, with something elsefor he was not used to drinking whisky, which some obscure local tradition considered the only decent beverage at funerals. His face was flushed, and every now and then something would be whirled round by the wind and whip his cheeks and blind him momentarily in a black cloud. At first he was too confused to grapple with it, but when two long black arms suddenly wound themselves about his neck, nearly choking him, he remembered his hat with the crape weepers, and his rage from red-hot became white-hot and cinerating. He tore off the hat with its long black tails, and flung it into the ditch with a volley of those emasculate oaths which are all the swearing of a Sussex man."I mean that, thanks to you, we wasted about three weeks talking to those damned fools about a matter they don't care twopence about. You worked up a false interest, and the result is, that when anything that really touches them is brought forward, the whole campaign drops to pieces."THE END.To stop the public, tax them, circumvent,
