It had started to rain. Grey lonely rain that stirred up the earth below the garden and coated Mercy’s old boots. Each step muttered something about the past; promises, feuds, diluted loves. Mercy had never fallen in love. She had never found a glance returned. She walked slowly along the edge of the field, measuring one boot after another, checking faces , rehearsing words for conversations she might have. No one bothered her at school. She edged around her school day as if it belonged to some one else and indeed(and how much she needed the word indeed) it did belong to another girl. A girl perhaps called Mercy, perhaps with long red hair and pale blue eyes and hands that loved the back of animals’ necks. But this girl had loved deeply and finally and without control and now she slept carefully in the village church yard; five foot six inches of bleached bone in a slate lidded box over a hundred and fifty years old.