All were not attired for a funeral.  A small crowd of women, with one or two men among them, stood together where a sycamore threw a patch of shade on a triangular space of grass near the church.  There were fifty of these people—­ancient women, others in their prime, and many young maidens.  Some communion linked them and the few men who stood with them.  All wore a black band upon their left arms.  Drab or grey was their attire, but sun-bonnets nodded bright as butterflies among them, and even their dull raiment was more cheerful than the gathering company in black who now began to mass their numbers and crane their heads along the highway.

Bridetown lies near the sea in a valley under a range of grassy downs.  It is the centre of a network of little lanes with cottages dotted upon them, or set back behind small gardens.  The dwellings stood under thatch, or weathered tile, and their faces at this season were radiant with roses and honeysuckles, jasmine and clematis.  Pinks, lilies, columbines made the garden patches gay, and, as though so many flowers were not enough, the windows, too, shone with geraniums and the scarlet tassels of great cactus, that lifted their exotic, thorny bodies behind the window panes.  Not a wall but flaunted red valerian and snapdragon.  Indeed Bridetown was decked with blooms.

Here and there in the midst stood better houses, with some expanse of lawn before them and flat shrubs that throve in that snug vale.  Good walnut trees and mulberries threw their shadows on grass plat and house front, while the murmur of bees came from many bright borders.

South the land rose again to the sea cliffs, for the spirits of ocean and the west wind have left their mark upon Bride Vale.  The white gulls float aloft; the village elms are moulded by Zephyr with sure and steady breath.  Of forestal size and unstunted, yet they turn their backs, as it were, upon the west and, yielding to that unsleeping pressure, incline landward.  The trees stray not far.  They congregate in an oasis about Bridetown, then wend away through valley meadows, but leave the green hills bare.  The high ground rolls upward to a gentle skyline and the hillsides, denuded by water springs, or scratched by man, reveal the silver whiteness of the chalk where they are wounded.

Bride river winds in the midst, and her bright waters throw a loop round the eastern frontier of the hamlet, pass under the highway, bring life to the cottage gardens and turn more wheels than one.  Bloom of apple and pear are mirrored on her face and fruit falls into her lap at autumn time.  Then westward she flows through the water meadows, and so slips uneventfully away to sea, where the cliffs break and there stretches a little strand.  To the last she is crowned with flowers, and the meadowsweets and violets that decked her cradle give place to sea poppies, sea hollies, and stones encrusted with lichens of red gold, where Bride flows to one great pool, sinks into the sand and glides unseen to her lover.