44 THE OLD SEXTON. 



sudden disappearance. His widow, whose lover was soon 

 afterwards killed at Flodden, mocked the memory of her hapless 

 spouse by numerous masses and a stately tomb, to which her own 

 name and effigy were afterwards appended. So went the tale. 



Though generally neglected by day and avoided by night, 

 there was one inhabitant of our village by whom the old church, 

 churchyard, and, above all, the Tomkins' tomb, were once 

 regarded with a reverence and love which cast out fear. This 

 was an old man named also Toinkins, then sexton of the parish, 

 and cicerone to the parish church, which, on account of its 

 high antiquity, was now and then visited by persons of anti- 

 quarian taste from an adjacent watering-place. 



Old Tomkins remembered the church in all the integrity 

 of its ancient body, remembered the Tomkins' monument 

 standing under the canopy of a fretted roof, when (as the very 

 gem of his sepulchral cabinet) he used to exhibit it to strangers, 

 and relate its gloomy legend, embellished by himself, and all 

 with a pride in nowise lessened by the coincidence of his own 

 family name with that of the murdered knight; and it was, 

 perhaps, chiefly to encourage and keep up the notion that he 

 was descended from the same stock, that he was proud also to 

 borrow the Christian appellation of Sir Timothy for the first 

 little grandson (also godson) who came into the world to 

 receive it. 



But somehow or another, the ill-fated little knight's name 

 seemed to carry with it its fatality. Father, or mother, the little 



