Dracula

up on the ice in the old days, when
we'd be at one another from daylight to dark, an' tryin' to tie up our
cuts by the light of the aurora borealis." This was evidently local
pleasantry, for the old man cackled over it, and his cronies joined in
with gusto.
"But," I said, "surely you are not quite correct, for you start on
the assumption that all the poor people, or their spirits, will have
to take their tombstones with them on the Day of Judgment. Do you
think that will be really necessary?"
"Well what else be they tombstones for? Answer me that, miss!"
"To please their relatives, I suppose."
"To please their relatives, you suppose!" This he said with
intense scorn. "How will it pleasure their relatives to know that lies
is wrote over them, and that everybody in the place knows that they be
lies?" He pointed to a stone at our feet which had been laid down as a
slab, on which the seat was rested, close to the edge of the cliff.
"Read the lies on that thruff-stean," he said. The letters were upside
down to me from where I sat, but Lucy was more opposite to them, so
she leant over and read:-
{CH06 ^paragraph 20}
"Sacred to the memory of George Canon, who died, in the hope of a
glorious resurrection, on July 29, 1873, falling from the rocks at
Kettleness. This tomb is erected by his sorrowing mother to her dearly
beloved son. 'He was the only son of his mother, and she was a
widow.'" "Really, Mr. Swales, I don't see anything very funny in
that!" She spoke her comment very gravely and somewhat severely.
"Ye don't see aught funny! Ha! ha! But that's because ye don't
gawm the sorrowin' mother was a hell-cat that hated him because he was
acrewk'd- a regular lamiter he was- an' he hated her so that he
committed suicide in order that she mightn't get an insurance she
put on his life. He blew night the top of his head off with an old
musket that they had for scarin' the crows with. 'Twarn't for crows
then, for it brought the clegs and the dowps to him. That's the way he
fell off the rocks. And, as to hopes of a glorious resurrection,
I've often heard him say masel' that he hoped he'd go to hell, for his
mother was so pious that she'd be sure to go to heaven, an' he
didn't wan't to addle where she was. Now isn't that stean at any
rate"- he hammered it with his stick as he spoke- "a pack of lies? and
won't it make Gabriel keckle when Geordie comes pantin' up the grees
with the tombstean balanced on his hump, and asks it to be took as
evidence!"
I did not know what to say, but Lucy turned the conversation as
she said, rising up:-
"Oh why did you tell us of this? it is