The day of the funeral came, and the question of the casket and the amulet was on my mind. The important thing, of course, was that the matter should be kept absolutely secret. The valuables must be placed in secrecy with the embalmed corpse at the last moment, before the screwing down of the coffin, when servants and undertakers were out of sight and hearing.
My mother knew what had been my father's instructions to me, and was desirous that they should be fulfilled, though she scorned the superstition. She and I placed the casket and the scroll hearing the written curse upon it beneath my father's head, and hung the chain of the amulet around his neck, so that the cross lay with the jewels uppermost upon his breast. Then the undertakers were called in to screw down the coffin in my presence. My mother afterwards called me to her room, and told me that she was much troubled about the cross. The amulet being of great value, my uncle Aylwin of Alvanley had tried to dissuade her from carrying into execution what he called 'the absurd whim of a mystic'; but my mother urged my promise, and there had been warm words between them, as my mother told me--adding, however, 'and the worst of it is, that scamp Wynne, whom your uncle introduced into this house without my knowledge or sanction, was passing the door while your uncle was talking, and if he did not hear every word about the jewelled cross, drink must have stupefied him indeed. _He_ is my only fear in connection with the jewels.' Her dislike of Wynne had made her forget for the moment the effect her words must have upon me.
'Mother,' I said, 'your persistent prejudice and injustice towards this man astonish me. Wynne, though poor and degraded now, is a gentleman born, and is no more likely to violate a tomb than the best Aylwin that ever lived.'
I will not dwell upon the scene at the funeral. I saw my father's coffin placed in the crypt that spread beneath the deserted church. It was by the earnest wish of my father that he was buried in a church already deserted because the grip of the resistless sea was upon it. At this very time a very large slice of the cliff behind the church was pronounced dangerous, and I perceived that new rails were lying on the grass ready to be fixed up, further inland than ever.