can’t move your own off your belly, which floats will be lucky for Percy to place in his buckets. Take your time,
my girl, and choose. First which of these signs goes in the right one. Here they all be drawed out very nice. What
do you say?” He put the idol up to his ear, as though it was whispering to him. “Oh, I see. Well certainly, having
been a goddess you’ve every right to have you own say in it. You don’t want to choose from the drawings, eh? You
wants to choose the bits of wood yourself and give ‘em to Percy into his own paws, eh? Well, then, we shan’t be
wanting the drawings any more then since the signs is all made shipshape, so we’ll throw it away? Certainly.” He
crumpled up the parchment and dropped it on the floor behind the coffin which served as his counter.
He then thrust his other little finger through the other crook in her arm and walked the idol up and down the
coffin lid as though it was viewing the various pieces of wood. He then made the figure stoop, and with his fingers
he lifted up one of the two aces of clubs.
“There you are, Percy,” said Mipps solemnly. “Take it from her and hold it in your right hand while she
considers the other one.” This time he made the idol pick up one of the diamond shapes, which Percy accepted in
his left hand, giving the idol an absurd little bob of respect.
“So that’s settled all very amicable,” went on the Sexton. “Put the club in you starboard bucket and the diamond
in the port. And mind you, Percy, if you was to change them without Judy here telling you, she’d bring the most
‘orrible disaster upon you, me and the village, not to mention Squire and the’oly Vicar. So don’t you change ‘em
for no one, see?”
Percy did as he was ordered, and stooped down to place the floats carefully at the bottom of the empty buckets,
for he had poured the water into the cask as he had come into the door.
Mipps, thinking him to be occupied below the coffin with his buckets, very quickly picked up the parchment he
had thrown down, but Percy saw him do this through the trestles on which the coffin rested, and he wondered why
Mipps who had thrown away the paper should pick it up again, and place it with so much care and so furtively inside
the old tin containing the snuff. He would have liked to have seen that parchment with the drawings, and was about
to ask Mipps if he might do so, when there suddenly dashed through the open door a fisherman named Hart, who,
seeing Percy, shouted out, “ Where’s Mipps?”
“Here he be,” replied that worthy, looking round from the dark corner where the shelves were. “What do you
want, mate? Something wrong?”
“Aye, big trouble, Sexton,” explained the fisherman, who was almost out of breath with running.
‘Trouble?” snapped Mipps, and Percy wondered why he put his finger to his lips, and glanced angrily first
towards the fisherman and then in his direction.
“Personal trouble,” replied Hart. “Nothing to do with King’s men or wicked smugglers. No. It’s that our boat
has been washed up on the tide and badly holed. She’s empty, too, and my young bother had her out last night.
May I have the loan of yours to search for him?”
“Of course, mate,” replied the Sexton, quickly pulling on his coat. ‘I’ll come along and lend a hand. Poor young
Fred. Not come back, eh? And his wife with a new-born kid.”
“Aye, and what seems to make it worse,” went on Hart, “is this day being the old folks’ Golden Wedding. The
only hope is that Fred may have got picked up, but it’s slender.”
“Aye, maybe, by some vessel that couldn’t put him ashore immediate like, replied Mipps. “There’s a good
chance of that, I should say. Fred’s a good swimmer and a strong enough lad, and there weren’t a great sea running
last night. Come along. We can pull round to Dungeness and see if we can hear nay news of him. Last night’s tide
ran that way.”
As he hurried to the door he looked at back at Percy. “Stow them other floats on the shelf there, my lad,” he
ordered, “and don’t go changing ‘em from what we said whatever happens, mind.”
Left alone, Percy’s curiosity got the better of him, for as he placed the spare pieces of wood on the shelf his hand
touched the tin of snuff. There could be no great harm in opening it, he thought, and having a look at the drawings
from which Mipps had fashioned the floats.
When he took the lid off and peered inside, he could see nothing but the dark brown stuff, and no sign of the
parchment. But he remembered that Mipps had given the tin a good shaking, and had thus covered it up with the
snuff. Percy wondered whether he had done this on purpose. Why should Mipps want to hide a small piece of
parchment which he had already crumpled up and thrown carelessly away and then picked up again? Percy put his
ling fingers into the tin, and sure enough he found the parchment buried beneath the snuff. He drew it out very
carefully, anxious not to spill any of the brown dust, which made Mipps sneeze so heartily. He somehow did not
want Mipps to know that he was prying. The little sexton might not like it, he though, and he did not want to vex
one who had shown him such kindness.
He looked at Judy, and was relived that her eyes appeared to be close shut beneath her heavy, languid lids. He
hoped she wouldn’t tell the Sexton what he was doing, but for the life of him he could not resist the temptation. He
had meant to ask the Sexton if he might see it when all was said and done, and this though weighed with him and
gave him a little comfort.
Now although Percy had done little good for himself at school, partly because he hated the master, Mister Rash,
who had no patience with him, and made him a butt upon all occasions, and partly because everyone calling him the
Village Idiot, he took no pains to make them think otherwise, he had at least mastered the alphabet, and could spell
a few words of one syllable. In spite of this limitation he yet knew all the names on the local signposts, and no
sooner had he spread out the piece of parchment, than he recognized that here was a list of familiar places, against
which were sketches of his bits of wood. There, for instance, was the starboard club and the port diamond,
commanded by Judy, and against them was the name Littlestone Beach. After some difficulty he made out the word
at the top of the list to be LANDINGS. Two hearts together against ‘Dungeness, Sou’ west’, made him think of this
sudden trouble to the Hart family.
He not only liked Fred, who had always been kind to him, but he knew how much the old people had looked
forward to the golden Wedding, which was to be a day of great rejoicing, and now it seemed all was spoiled. As he
stowed away the list into the tin and covered it once more with the snuff, his eyes filled with tears of sorrow for the
Harts, so to clear his snivelling, which he had no wish for the parish to see upon his first day of rounds with his new
floats, he stole a good pinch of snuff, had a prodigious sneeze and felt better.
Then with the ace of clubs in his right bucket and the diamond ace in his left, he went back to the well to refill.
Now although the Hart tragedy was the source of village gossip, he could not fail to notice that at each cottage
particular interest was taken in his bits of wood.
Some folk said how good it was of the Sexton to have taken so much pains, and others praised the workmanship
and quaint design. As the interest continued throughout his round, Percy thought of that piece of parchment in the