When that gentleman had stalked out, the old lawyer looked at Ida with a mixture of dismay and commiseration.

“Not a—­er—­particularly cheerful and genial person, my dear; but no doubt Mr. John Heron is extremely conscientious and—­er—­good-hearted.”

“I daresay,” assented Ida, apathetically.  “It does not matter.  It was very kind of him to come so far to—­to the funeral,” she added.  “He might have stayed away, for I don’t think my father knew him, and I never heard of him.  Is it not time yet?” she asked, in a low voice.

As she spoke, Jessie came in and took her upstairs to her room to put on the thick black cloak, the bonnet with its long crape veil, in which Ida was to follow her father to the grave; for in spite of Mr. Wordley’s remonstrances, she had remained firm in her resolve to go to the church-yard.

Presently the procession started.  Only a few carriages followed the hearse which bore Godfrey Heron to his last resting-place; but when the vehicles cradled beyond the boundary of the grounds, across which the dead man had not set foot for thirty years, the cavalcade was swelled by a number of tenants, labourers, and dalesmen who had come to pay their last respects to Heron of Herondale; and marching in threes, which appears to be the regulation number for a funeral, they made a long and winding tail to the crawling coaches, quite filled the little church, and stood, a black-garbed crowd, in the pelting rain round the oblong hole which would suffice for the last bed of this one of the last of the lords of the dale.

But though all were present to show respect to the deceased squire, the attention of every man and woman was fixed upon the slight, girlish figure standing by the side of the grave, her head bent, her great mournful eye fixed upon the coffin, her hands clenched tightly as they held together the thick mourning cloak.  She looked so young, so almost child-like in the desolation of her solitude, that many of the women cried silently, and the rough men set their lips hard and looked sternly and grimly at the ground.

The old clergyman who had christened her and every Sunday had cast glances of interest and affection at her as she sat in the great “loose box” of a pew, found it very difficult to read the solemn service without breaking down, and his old thin voice quavered as he spoke the words of hope and consolation which the storm of wind and rain caught up and swept across the narrow church-yard and down the dale of which the Herons had been so long masters.

Mr. John Heron stood grim and gaunt opposite Ida, as if he were a figure carved out of wood, and showed no sign of animation until the end of the service, when he looked round with a sudden eagerness, and opened his large square lips as if he were going to “improve the occasion” by an address; but Mr. Wordley, who suspected him of such intention, nipped it in the bud by saying: 

“Will you give your arm to Miss Ida, Mr. Heron?  I want to get her back to the Hall as soon as possible.”