Everybody pitied Selina, whose story was well known.  She followed the corpse⁵ as the only mourner, Clark having been without relations in this part of the country, and a communication with his regiment⁶ having brought none from a distance.  She sat in a little shabby brown-black mourning carriage, squeezing herself up in a corner to be as much as possible out of sight during the slow and dramatic march through the town to the tune⁷ from Saul.  When the interment had taken place, the volleys been fired, and the return journey begun, it was with something like a shock that she found the military escort to be moving at a quick march to the lively strains of ‘Off she goes!’ as if all care for the sergeant-major was expected to be ended with the late discharge of the carbines.  It was, by chance, the very tune to which they had been footing when he died, and unable to bear its notes, she hastily told her driver to drop behind.  The band and military party diminished up the High Street, and Selina turned over Swan bridge and homeward to Mellstock.

 

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