Meanwhile, Hunter had taken his position a few yards in front of the hearse and the bearers each his proper position, two on each side.As the procession turned into the main road, they saw Snatchum standing at the corner looking very gloomy.Hunter kept his eyes fixed straight ahead and affected not to see him, but Crass could not resist the temptation to indulge in a jeering smile, which so enraged Snatchum that he shouted out:
`It don't matter! I shan't lose much! I can use it for someone else!'
The distance to the cemetery was about three miles, so as soon as they got out of the busy streets of the town, Hunter called a halt, and got up on the hearse beside the driver, Crass sat on the other side, and two of the other bearers stood in the space behind the driver's seat, the fourth getting up beside the driver of the coach; and then they proceeded at a rapid pace.
As they drew near to the cemetery they slowed down, and finally stopped when about fifty yards from the gate.Then Hunter and the bearers resumed their former position, mid they passed through the open gate and up to the door of the church, where they were received by the clerk - a man in a rusty black cassock, who stood by while they carried the coffin in and placed it on a kind of elevated table which revolved on a pivot.They brought it in footfirst, and as soon as they had placed it upon the table, the clerk swung it round so as to bring the foot of the coffin towards the door ready to be carried out again.
There was a special pew set apart for the undertakers, and in this Hunter and the bearers took their seats to await the arrival of the clergyman.Barrington and the three others sat on the opposite side.
There was no altar or pulpit in this church, but a kind of reading desk stood on a slightly raised platform at the other end of the aisle.
After a wait of about ten minutes, the clergyman entered and, at once proceeding to the desk, began to recite in a rapid and wholly unintelligible manner the usual office.If it had not been for the fact that each of his hearers had a copy of the words - for there was a little book in each pew - none of them would have been able to gather the sense of what the man was gabbling.Under any other circumstances, the spectacle of a human being mouthing in this absurd way would have compelled laughter, and so would the suggestion that this individual really believed that he was addressing the Supreme Being.His attitude and manner were contemptuously indifferent.
While he recited, intoned, or gabbled, the words of the office, he was reading the certificate and some other paper the clerk had placed upon the desk, and when he had finished reading these, his gaze wandered abstractedly round the chapel, resting for a long time with an expression of curiosity upon Bill Bates and the Semi-drunk, who were doing their best to follow in their books the words he was repeating.
He next turned his attention to his fingers, holding his hand away from him nearly at arm's length and critically examining the nails.
