Tom had been with other pauper lads in the gallery, a spot of vantage screened from the verger's eye, and where it mattered to nobody what heed you took of the service or sermon so long as you did not make too much noise. He had made haste to get outside the churchyard so that he might not miss his ever gentle friend, the schoolmaster, and now stood by the village stocks outside the graveyard wall and watched the stream of worshippers pass slowly by. Presently his hand was in the schoolmaster's, who turned his face to the road which led past the workhouse boundaries down to his own home at Diggle.
The schoolmaster paused, hesitated. They had left the rough and narrow road and crossed a stile into the fields. They were on the higher ground and could plainly see the churchyard. The loiterers had gone their homeward way or drifted into the Inn to seek a solace that is supposed to be appropriate alike in the glad hours of rejoicing and the heavy time of affliction.
"Your mother lies yonder," said Mr. Black, solemnly and sadly.
They retraced their steps and sought the ancient burial ground with it's sunken crosses and mouldering mossy stones, and those little mounds without a name that cover the humble dead. In a distant corner Mr. Black stood with uncovered head by a small marble cross and stone slab.
sacred to the memory OF A. J. AN UNKNOWN WANDERER WHO DIED IN CHILDBED AT THE HANGING GATE, DIGGLE. JAN. 11TH, 183--.
Tom gazed upon the simple monument till he could gaze no more, for blinding, scalding tears welled into his eyes and trickled down his cheeks.
"Let us go home," he said, "let me stop with you to-day."
In the evening of that peaceful Sunday the school-master told the foundling all he knew: he placed in his hand the precious locket taken from the mother's neck and promised that it should be transferred to Tom's, keeping when he should be old enough to keep it safely.
"You will treasure it as the immediate jewel of your soul," he said; "for thereby you may clear your mother's name." Then, falling on his knees he read the evening prayer, and with his blessing dismissed the lad.
THE ancient village of Holmfirth on the river Holme was, in former days, of considerably more pretension than it is to-day, when the neighbouring town of Huddersfield dwarfs the surrounding communities. Holmfirth stands near the head of the valley of the Holme, and at one time was looked up to as a petty capital by the straggling hamlets that intervened between the river's head and the spot where, some nine miles below, its tortuous course joins the river Colne at King's mill in Huddersfield, whence the united currents sweep in broader stream to blend with the Calder at Cooper Bridge, and so onwards to the capacious bosom of the Humber.