The Watchers by A.E.W. Mason

I took my supper in the kitchen of the Palace Inn, with a strong reek of tobacco to season it, and a succession of gruesome stories to make it palatable. The company was made up for the most part of fishermen, who talked always of wrecks upon the western islands and of dead men drowned. But occasionally a different accent and a different anecdote of some other corner of the world would make a variation; and doing my best to pierce the haze of smoke, I recognised the speaker as Peter Tortue, the Frenchman, or the man with the patch on his eye. George Glen was there too, tucked away in a corner by the fireplace, but he said very little. I paid, therefore, but a scanty attention, until, the talk having slid, as it will, from dead men to their funerals, some native began to descant upon the magnificence of Adam Mayle's.

"Ay," said he, drawing a long breath, "there _was_ a funeral, and all according to orders dictated in writing by the dead man. He was to be buried by torchlight in the Abbey Grounds. I do remember that! Mortal heavy he was, and he needed a big coffin."