y arch crosses the
road obliquely, and there get down and turn to the right up a narrow,
noisy street leading to the river, and then to the right again up a still
narrower street, which you may know by its having a public-house at one
corner (as is in the nature of things) and a marine store-dealer's at the
other, outside which strangely stiff and unaccommodating garments of
gigantic size flutter ghost-like in the wind, you will come to a dingy
railed-in churchyard, surrounded on all sides by cheerless, many-peopled
houses. Sad-looking little old houses they are, in spite of the tumult
of life about their ever open doors. They and the ancient church in
their midst seem weary of the ceaseless jangle around them. Perhaps,
standing there for so many years, listening to the long silence of the
dead, the fretful voices of the living sound foolish in their ears.

Peering through the railings on the side nearest the river, you will see
beneath the shadow of the soot-grimed church's soot-grimed porch--that
is, if the sun happen, by rare chance, to be strong enough to cast any
shadow at all in that region of grey light--a curiously high and narrow
headstone that once was white and straight, not tottering and bent with
age as it is now. There is upon this stone a carving in bas-relief, as
you will see for yourself if you will make your way to it through the
gateway on the opposite side of the square. It represents, so far as can
be made out, for it is much worn by time and dirt, a figure lying on the
ground with another figure bending over it, while at a little distance
stands a third object. But this last is so indistinct that it might be
almost anything, from an angel to a post.

And below the carving are the words (already half obliterated) that I
have used for the title of this story.

Should you ever wander of a Sunday morning within sound of the cracked
bell that calls a few habit-bound, old-fashioned folk to worship within
those damp-stained walls, and drop into talk with the old men who on such
days sometimes sit, each in his brass-buttoned long brown coat, upon the
low stone coping underneath those broken railings, you might hear this
tale from them, as I did, more years ago than I care to recollect.

But lest you do not choose to go to all this trouble, or lest the old men
who could tell it you have grown tired of all talk, and are not to be
roused ever again into the telling of tales, and you yet wish for the