Two children on the Portchester road were exchanging boyish confidences.

“Do you know what I think about it?” asked one.

“Naw!  How should I?”

“Wall, I think old Mrs. Webb got the likes of what she sent.  Don’t you know she had six children once, and that she killed every one of them?”

“Killed’em—­she?”

“Yes, I heard her tell granny once all about it.  She said there was a blight on her house—­I don’t know what that is; but I guess it’s something big and heavy—­and that it fell on every one of her children, as fast as they came, and killed ’em.”

“Then I’m glad I ben’t her child.”

Very different were the recollections interchanged between two middle-aged Portchester women.

“She was drinking tea at my house when her sister Sairey came running in with the news that the baby she had left at home wasn’t quite right.  That was her first child, you know.”

“Yes, yes, for I was with her when that baby came,” broke in the other, “and such joy as she showed when they told her it was alive and well I never saw.  I do not know why she didn’t expect it to be alive, but she didn’t, and her happiness was just wonderful to see.”

“Well, she didn’t enjoy it long.  The poor little fellow died young.  But I was telling you of the night when she first heard he was ailing.  Philemon had been telling a good story, and we were all laughing, when Sairey came in.  I can see Agatha now.  She always had the most brilliant eyes in the county, but that day they were superbly dazzling.  They changed, though, at the sight of Sairey’s face, and she jumped to meet her just as if she knew what Sairey was going to say before ever a word left her lips.  ’My baby!’ (I can hear her yet.) ’Something is the matter with the baby!’ And though Sairey made haste to tell her that he was only ailing and not at all ill, she turned upon Philemon with a look none of us ever quite understood; he changed so completely under it, just as she had under Sairey’s; and to neither did the old happiness ever return, for the child died within a week, and when the next came it died also, and the next, till six small innocents lay buried in yonder old graveyard.”

“I know; and sad enough it was too, especially as she and Philemon were both fond of children.  Well, well, the ways of Providence are past rinding out!  And now she is gone and Philemon—–­”

“Ah, he’ll follow her soon; he can’t live without Agatha.”

Nearer home, the old sexton was chattering about the six gravestones raised in Portchester churchyard to these six dead infants.  He had been sent there to choose a spot in which to lay the mother, and was full of the shock it gave him to see that line of little stones, telling of a past with which the good people of Sutherlandtown found it hard to associate Philemon and Agatha Webb.

“I’m a digger of graves,” he mused, half to himself and half to his old wife watching him from the other side of the hearthstone.  “I spend a good quarter of my time in the churchyard; but when I saw those six little mounds, and read the inscriptions over them, I couldn’t help feeling queer.  Think of this!  On the first tiny headstone I read these words:”