two funerals which were now in the churchyard, was a person quite at the
other extremity of life. Margaret saw the man of a hundred years, Jem
Bird, the pride of the village in his way, seated on the bench under the
spreading tree, which was youthful in comparison with himself. He was
listlessly watching the black figures which moved about in the light of
a solitary torch, by an open grave, while waiting for the clergyman who
was engaged with the group beyond.

"You are late abroad, Mr Bird," said Margaret. "I should not have
looked for you here so far on in the evening."

"What's your will?" said the old man.

"Grandfather won't go home ever, till they have done here," said a
great-grandchild of the old man, running up from his amusement of
hooting to the owls in the church tower. "They'll soon have done with
these two, and then grandfather and I shall go home. Won't we, granny?"

"Does it not make you sad to see so many funerals?" said Margaret,
sitting down on the bench beside him.

"Ay."

"Had you not better stay at home than see so many that you knew laid in
the ground?"

"Does he understand?" she asked aside of the boy. "Does he never answer
but in this way?"

"Oh! he talks fast enough sometimes. It is just as you happen to take
him."

Margaret was curious to know what were the meditations among the tombs
of one so aged as this man: so she spoke again.

"I have heard that you knew this place before anybody lived in it: and
now you seem likely to see it empty again."

"It was a wild place enough in my young time," said Jem, speaking now
very fluently. "There was nothing of it but the church; and that was
never used, because it had had its roof pulled off in the wars. There
was only a footpath to it through the fields then, and few people went
nigh it--except a few gentry that came a-pleasuring here, into the
woods. The owls and I knew it as well then as we do to-day, and nobody
else that is now living. The owls and I."

And the old man laughed the chuckling laugh which was all he had
strength for.

"The woods!" said Margaret. "Did the Verdon woods spread as far as this
church in those days? And were they not private property then?"

"It was all forest hereabouts, except a clear space round the church
tower. It might be thin sprinkled, but it was called forest. The place
where I was born had thorns all about it; and when I could scarce walk
alone, I used to scramble among the blossom