k that is? Why should a monument be so
stimulating to the imagination? And why should a common headstone be
more so than any other?"

"I suppose it is," I answered reflectively, "that a churchyard monument
is a peculiarly personal thing and appertains in a peculiar way to a
particular time. And the circumstance that it has stood untouched by
the passing years while everything around has changed, helps the
imagination to span the interval. And the common headstone, the
memorial of some dead and gone farmer or laborer who lived and died in
the village hard by, is still more intimate and suggestive. The
rustic, childish sculpture of the village mason and the artless
doggerel of the village schoolmaster, bring back the time and place and
the conditions of life more vividly than the more scholarly
inscriptions and the more artistic enrichments of monuments of greater
pretensions. But where are your own family tombstones?"

"They are over in that farther corner. There is an intelligent, but
inopportune, person apparently copying the epitaphs. I wish he would
go away. I want to show them to you."

I now noticed, for the first time, an individual engaged, notebook in
hand, in making a careful survey of a group of old headstones.
Evidently he was making a copy of the inscriptions, for not only was he
poring attentively over the writing on the face of the stone, but now
and again he helped out his vision by running his fingers over the worn
lettering.

"That is my grandfather's tombstone that he is copying now," said Miss
Bellingham; and even as she spoke, the man turned and directed a
searching glance at us with a pair of keen, spectacled eyes.

Simultaneously we uttered an exclamation of surprise; for the
investigator was Mr. Jellicoe.

CHAPTER XVI

O ARTEMIDORUS, FAREWELL!

Whether or not Mr. Jellicoe was surprised to see us, it is impossible
to say. His countenance (which served the ordinary purposes of a face,
inasmuch as it contained the principal organs of special sense, with
inlets to the alimentary and respiratory tracts) was, as an apparatus
for the expression of the emotions, a total failure. To a
thought-reader it would have been about as helpful as the face carved
upon the handle of an umbrella; a comparison suggested, perhaps, by a
certain resemblance to such an object. He advanced, holding open his
notebook and pencil, and having saluted us with a stiff bow and an
old-fashioned flourish