“What Act?” Ralph asked.

“Why, sir, you never mean that you don’t know about the Act of Uniformity?”

“That’s what I do mean, my friend,” said Ralph.

“Don’t know the Act of Uniformity!  Have you heard of the Five Mile Bill?”

“No.”

“Nor the Test Bill that the Bishop wants to get afoot?”

“No.”

“Deary me, deary me,” said the clerk, with undisguised horror at Ralph’s ignorance of the projected ecclesiastical enactments of his King and country.  Then, with a twinkle in the corner of his upward eye as he held his head aside, the old man said,—­

“Perhaps your honor has been away in foreign parts?”

Ralph had to decline this respectable cover for his want of familiarity with matters which were obviously vital concerns, and perhaps the subjects of daily conversation, with his interlocutor.

The clerk had resumed his labors.  When he paused again it was in order to enlighten Ralph’s ignorance on these solemn topics.

“You see, sir, the old ’piscopacy is back again, and the John Presbyters that joined it are snug in their churches, but the Presbyters that would not join it are turned out of their livings.  There—­that’s the Act of Uniformity.”

“The Act of Non-Conformity, I should say,” replied Ralph.

“Well, the Jack Presbyters are not to be allowed within five miles of a market town—­that’s the new Five Mile Bill.  And they are not to be made schoolmasters or tutors, or to hold public offices, unless they take the sacrament of the Church—­and that’s what the Bishop calls his Test Act; but he’ll scarce get it this many a long year, say I—­no, not he.”

The clerk had offered his lucid exposition with the air of one who could afford to be modestly sensible of the superiority of his knowledge.

“And when he does get it he’ll want an Act more, so far as I can see,” said Ralph, “and that’s a Burial Act—­an Act to bury the Presbyters alive.  They’d be full as well buried, I think.”.

A shrewd glance from the old man’s quick eyes showed that at that moment he had arrived at one of three conclusions—­that Ralph himself was a Presbyter or a Roundhead, or both.

“Our minister was a Presbyter,” he observed aloud, “and when the Act came in he left his benefice.”

But Ralph was not minded to pursue the subject.

The grave was now ready; it had required to be long and wide, but not deep.

The snow was beginning to fall again.

“Hard work on a morning like this,” said the clerk, coughing as he threw aside his spade.  “This is the sort of early morning that makes an old man like me catch his breath.  And I haven’t always been parish clerk and dug graves.  I was schoolmaster till Michaelmas.”

It was time to commit to the grave the burden which had passed three long weeks on the back of the mare.  Not until this moment did Ralph’s hand once relax its firm grip of Betsy’s bridle.  Loosing it now, he applied himself to the straps and ropes that bound the coffin.  When all was made clear, he prepared to lift the body to the ground.  It was large and heavy, and required the hands of Sim and the clerk as well.