On the Sunday morning after the day on which the Signal had printed the menu of Daniel Povey’s supreme breakfast, and the exact length of the ‘drop’ which the executioner had administered to him, Constance and Cyril stood together at the window of the large bedroom.  The boy was in his best clothes; but Constance’s garments gave no sign of the Sabbath.  She wore a large apron over an old dress that was rather tight for her.  She was pale and looked ill.

“Oh, mother!” Cyril exclaimed suddenly.  “Listen!  I’m sure I can hear the band.”

She checked him with a soundless movement of her lips; and they both glanced anxiously at the silent bed, Cyril with a gesture of apology for having forgotten that he must make no noise.

The strains of the band came from down King Street, in the direction of St. Luke’s Church.  The music appeared to linger a long time in the distance, and then it approached, growing louder, and the Bursley Town Silver Prize Band passed under the window at the solemn pace of Handel’s “Dead March.”  The effect of that requiem, heavy with its own inherent beauty and with the vast weight of harrowing tradition, was to wring the tears from Constance’s eyes; they fell on her aproned bosom, and she sank into a chair.  And though, the cheeks of the trumpeters were puffed out, and though the drummer had to protrude his stomach and arch his spine backwards lest he should tumble over his drum, there was majesty in the passage of the band.  The boom of the drum, desolating the interruptions of the melody, made sick the heart, but with a lofty grief; and the dirge seemed to be weaving a purple pall that covered every meanness.

The bandsmen were not all in black, but they all wore crape on their sleeves and their instruments were knotted with crape.  They carried in their hats a black-edged card.  Cyril held one of these cards in his hands.  It ran thus: 

Sacred to the memory of Daniel Povey A town councillor of this town judicially murdered at 8 o’clock in the morning 8th February 1888 “He was more sinned against than Sinning.”

In the wake of the band came the aged Rector, bare-headed, and wearing a surplice over his overcoat; his thin white hair was disarranged by the breeze that played in the chilly sunshine; his hands were folded on a gilt-edged book.  A curate, churchwardens, and sidesmen followed.  And after these, tramping through the dark mud in a procession that had apparently no end, wound the unofficial male multitude, nearly all in mourning, and all, save the more aristocratic, carrying the memorial card in their hats.  Loafers, women, and children had collected on the drying pavements, and a window just opposite Constance was ornamented with the entire family of the landlord of the Sun Vaults.