d devolve upon
her loutish servant at her death. But the lesson had been learned, the
third coffin taken from the boat-house, the body laid within it at the
graveside, carried swiftly from the house wrapped in a sheet, the lid
nailed down, the earth filled in.

Gaspingly he verified my quiet questions and surmises--I have enough
New England blood to know what ghastly forethought we are capable
of!--and slowly he calmed himself, seeing that we were neither
frightened nor angry ...

One end of the island repeats on a tiny scale the formation of the
original peninsula. Three quaint red cedars stand pointed and forever
green, more like the cypresses of Italy than anything in America;
around its rocky beach the waves beat incessantly, but its grass is
fresh and green, for there is a little spring there. Under the
cypresses lie three flat graves, two side by side, one across their
feet, and over each lies a flat carved table of marble--rich carvings
that once stretched under three heavy mullioned windows over the back
doors of an old Italian palace. There are only initials on these
tables, initials and the numerals of years, but they are not utterly
unblest. Good Parson Elder read the most beautiful burial service in
the world over them, broken by the tears of a trusty servant; the
children and the children's children of the crumbling bodies under two
of those tables stood over them hand in hand; and Nature, who bears no
grudge nor ever excommunicates the fruitful, brings to the sunlight
every year the yellow daffodils and white narcissus, the wild rose and
beach bayberry, the marigold and asters that love has planted there.

It may be that further clues, more detailed accounts of that secret
island life, were hidden in those coffins; we never tried if it was
so. Unknown and lonely they lived, unknown and lonely they had wished
to lie in death, and so we left them, safe even from ourselves, who
loved them for the wonderful child they had given us. And I like to
think that God is no less forgiving than the Nature through which he
tries to lead us to him.

CHAPTER XXVI

A HANDFUL OF MEMORIES

They left in October that year; Margarita to get ready for her
_debut_, Roger, quiet and inscrutable, to work, as he said, at his
treatise on Napoleon. He had grown deeply interested in this and spent
most of his leisure at it, and it had gone far beyond his first idea
of an essay. I did not go with them, but took the occas