Page:Pontoppidan - Emanuel, or Children of the Soil (1896).djvu/74

 chill from the bare white-washed walls, which even in summer were green with damp. In winter the cold was so intense that the water in the font froze to solid ice, and the priest had to wear overshoes and thick mittens in the pulpit.

On week-days the church remained undisturbed except for the visits of the tall lean sexton, who went by the name of "Death." He used to wander out from the village, morning and evening, meditatively, with his long bony arms crossed behind his back, to ring out a few deep notes from the rusty bells, over the foxes prowling among the thorns, the parish clerk's sheep grazing sadly outside the churchyard walls, or, now and then, over a solitary fisherman catching bait in his boat under the steep cliffs.

But on Sundays—especially the great festivals—all was life and bustle. Then the road from Skibberup swarmed with pedestrians in holiday clothes and well-cleaned vehicles. The fishermen came sailing round the "Ness" and lay to by the big stone on the beach, whence the men carried the women ashore. The women all wore black church-going hoods, and many carried wreaths and crosses of moss and flowers, which they laid on the wind-swept graves, before going into church in single file. In the meantime "Death" stood at his look-out post, at one corner of the churchyard, whence he could see the clergyman's carriage coming along the Veilby