44 THE OLD SEXTON. 



sudden disappearance. His widow, whose lover was soon 

 afterwards killed at Flodden, mocked the memory of her hap- 

 less 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 Tomkins, 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 stand- 

 ing 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 de- 

 scended 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 



