230 AN OCTOBER ABROAD. 



or four figures appeared at the head of the avenue of 

 limes, foremost of them, a woman, bearing an infant's 

 coffin under her arm, wrapped in a white sheet. t The 

 clerk and sexton, with their robes on, went out to 

 meet them, and conducted them into the church, 

 where the service proper to such occasions was read, 

 after which the coffin was taken out as it was brought 

 in, and lowered into the grave. It was the smallest 

 funeral I ever saw, and my efforts to play the part of 

 a sympathizing public by hovering in the background, 

 I fear, was only an intrusion after all. 



Having loitered to my heart's content amid the 

 stillness of the old church, and paced to and fro above 

 the illustrious dead, I set out, with the sun about an 

 hour high, to see the house of Anne Hathaway at 

 Shattery, shunning the highway and following a 

 path that followed hedge-rows, crossed meadows and 

 pastures, skirted turnip fields and cabbage patches, to 

 a quaint gathering of low thatched houses a little 

 village of farmers and laborers about a mile from 

 Stratford. At the gate in front of the house a boy 

 was hitching a little gray donkey, almost hidden be- 

 .teath two immense panniers filled with coarse hay. 



" Whose house is this ? " inquired I, not being quite 

 able to make out the name. 



" Harm 'Ataway's 'ouse," said he. 



So I took a good look at Anne's house a homely 

 numan-looking habitation, with its old oak beams and 

 thatched roof but did not go in, as Mrs. Baker, who 

 was eyeing me from the door, evidently hoped I would. 



