"There; that's it. That's where they buried Frenchman," said Andrew -- known as River Andrew. For there was another Andrew who earned his living on the sea. River Andrew had conducted the two gentlemen from "The Black Sailor" to the churchyard by their own request. A message had been sent to him in the morning that this service would be required of him, to which he had returned the answer that they would have to wait until the evening. It was his day to go round Marshford way with dried fish, he said; but in the evening they could see the church if they still set their minds on it. River Andrew combined the light duties of grave-digger and clerk to the parish of Farlingford in Suffolk with a small but steady business in fish of his own drying, nets of his own netting, and pork slain and dressed by his own weather-beaten hands...

Author Biography

Hugh Stowell Scott (1862 - 1903) was a prominent English novelist who used the pseudonym Henry Seton Merriman. His most successful novel was The Sowers (1896), which went through thirty UK editions. Born in Newcastle upon Tyne, he became an underwriter at Lloyd's of London, but then devoted himself to travel and to writing novels, many of which had great popularity. Scott visited India as a tourist in 1877-78 and set his novel Flotsam (1896) there. He was an enthusiastic traveler, many of his journeys being undertaken with his friend and fellow author Stanley J. Weyman. His first novel, Young Mistley was published anonymously in 1888. His other novels include The Phantom Future, The Slave of the Lamp, From One Generation to Another, The Sowers, In Kedar's Tents, Roden's Corner, Suspense, Dross, Slave of the Lamp, With Edged Tools, Grey Lady, Isle of Unrest, The Velvet Glove, The Vultures, Queen, Barlasch of the Guard and The Last Hope. He worked with great care and his best books held a high place in Victorian fiction.