'I say, where's Martin?' said Dangerfield, cheerfully.
'He's gone away, Sir.'
'Hey! then you've no one with you?'
'No, Sir.'
Dangerfield walked straight on, up the step of the communion-table, and
shoving open the little balustraded door, he made a gay stride or two
across the holy precinct, and with a quick right-about face, came to a
halt, the white, scoffing face, for exercise never flushed it, and the
cold, broad sheen of the spectacles, looked odd in the clerk's eyes,
facing the church-door, from beside the table of the sacrament,
displayed, as it were, in the very frame--foreground, background, and
all--in which he was wont to behold the thoughtful, simple, holy face of
the rector.
'Alone among the dead; and not afraid?' croaked the white face
pleasantly.
The clerk seemed always to writhe and sweat silently under the banter of
his comrade of the landing-net, and he answered, without lifting his
head, in a constrained and dogged sort of way, like a man who expects
something unpleasant--
'Alone? yes, Sir, there's none here but ourselves.'
And his face flushed, and the veins on his forehead stood out, as will
happen with a man who tugs at a weight that is too much for him.
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