Bates made an impatient exclamation and kicked him.  The kick was a subdued one.  The wind-swept solitude without and the insistent presence of death within had its effect upon them all.  Saul looked uneasily over his shoulder at the shadows which the guttering candle cast on the wall.  Bates handled the coffin-lid with that shrinking from noise which is peculiar to such occasions.

“Ye’d better go in the other room,” said he to Sissy.  “It’s unfortunate we haven’t a screw left—­we’ll have to nail it.”

Sissy did not go.  They had made holes in the wood for the nails as well as they could, but they had to be hammered in.  It was very disagreeable—­the sound and the jar.  With each stroke of Saul’s hammer it seemed to the two workmen that the dead man jumped.

“There, man,” cried Bates angrily; “that’ll do.”

Only four nails had been put in their places—­one in each side.  With irritation that amounted to anger against Saul, Bates took the hammer from him and shoved it on to a high shelf.

“Ye can get screws at the village, ye know,” he said, still indignantly, as if some fault had appertained to Saul.

Then, endeavouring to calm an ill-temper which he felt to be wholly unreasonable, he crossed his arms and sat down on a chair by the wall.  His sitting in that room at all perhaps betokened something of the same sensation which in Saul produced those glances before and behind, indicating that he did not like to turn his back upon any object of awe.  In Bates this motive, if it existed, was probably unconscious or short-lived; but while he still sat there Saul spoke, with a short, silly laugh which was by way of preface.

“Don’t you think, now, Mr. Bates, it ’ud be better to have a prayer, or a hymn, or something of that sort?  We’d go to bed easier.”

To look at the man it would not have been easy to attribute any just notion of the claims of religion to him.  He looked as if all his motions, except those of physical strength, were vapid and paltry.  Still, this was what he said, and Bates replied stiffly: 

“I’ve no objections.”

Then, as if assuming proper position for the ceremony that was to ease his mind, the big lumberman sat down.  The girl also sat down.

Bates, wiry, intelligent Scot that he was, sat, his arms crossed and his broad jaw firmly set, regarding them both with contempt in his mind.  What did they either of them know about the religion they seemed at this juncture to feel after as vaguely as animals feel after something they want and have not?  But as for him, he understood religion; he was quite capable of being priest of his household, and he felt that its weak demand for a form of worship at this time was legitimate.  In a minute, therefore, he got up, and fetching a large Bible from the living-room he sat down again and turned over its leaves with great precision and reverence.