“Alas no! Woe’s me! There is no Sin Eater for poor Sarn. Gideon
gainsayed it.”
Now it was still the custom at that time, in our part of the country, to
give a fee to some poor man after a death, and then he would take bread
and wine handed to him across the coffin, and eat and drink, saying—
_I give casement and rest now to thee, dear man, that ye walk not over
the fields nor down the by-ways. And for thy peace I pawn my own soul._
And with a calm and grievous look he would go to his own place. Mostly,
my Grandad used to say, Sin Eaters were such as had been Wise Men or
layers of spirits, and had fallen on evil days. Or they were poor folk
that had come, through some dark deed, out of the kindly life of men,
and with whom none would trade, whose only food might oftentimes be the
bread and wine that had crossed the coffin. In our time there were none
left around Sarn. They had nearly died out, and they had to be sent for
to the mountains. It was a long way to send, and they asked a big price,
instead of doing it for nothing as in the old days. So Gideon said—
“We’ll save the money. What good would the man do?”
But Mother cried and moaned all night after. And when the Sexton said
“Be there a Sin Eater?” she cried again very pitifully, because Father
had died in his wrath, with all his sins upon him, and besides, he had
died in his boots, which is a very unket thing and bodes no good. So she
thought he had great need of a Sin Eater, and she would not be
comforted.
Then a strange, heart-shaking thing came to pass.