use, till I found myself in the old solitary burying-ground
beside the Conon, which, when last in this part of the country, I was
prevented from visiting by the swollen waters. The rich yellow light
streamed through the interstices of the tall hedge of forest-trees that
encircles the eminence, once an island, and fell in fantastic patches on
the gray tombstone and the graves. The ruinous little chapel in the
corner, whose walls a quarter of a century before I had distinctly
traced, had sunk into a green mound; and there remained over the sward
but the arch-stone of a Gothic window, with a portion of the moulded
transom attached, to indicate the character and style of the vanished
building. The old dial-stone, with the wasted gnomon, has also
disappeared; and the few bright-colored _throch-stanes_, raw from the
chisel, that had been added of late years to the group of older
standing, did not quite make up for what time in the same period had
withdrawn. One of the newer inscriptions, however, recorded a curious
fact. When I had resided in this part of the country so long before,
there was an aged couple in the neighborhood, who had lived together, it
was said, as man and wife, for more than sixty years: and now, here was
their tombstone and epitaph. They had lived on long after my departure;
and when, as the seasons passed, men and women whose births and baptisms
had taken place since their wedding-day were falling around them well
stricken in years, death seemed to have forgotten _them_; and when he
came at last, their united ages made up well nigh two centuries. The
wife had seen her ninety-sixth and the husband his hundred and second
birthday. It does not transcend the skill of the actuary to say how many
thousand women must die under ninety-six for every one that reaches it,
and how many tens of thousands of men must die under a hundred and two
for every man who attains to an age so extraordinary; but he would
require to get beyond his tables in order to reckon up the chances
against the woman destined to attain to ninety-six being courted and
married in early life by the man born to attain to a hundred and two.

After enjoying a magnificent sunset on the banks of the Conon, just
where the scenery, exquisite throughout, is most delightful, I returned
through the woods, and spent half an hour by the way in the cottage of a
kindly-hearted woman, now considerably advanced in years, whom I had
known, when she was in middle