of memory seemed
to have bound to the place for the rest of their lives, and compelled
to wander, like unburied corpses, in quest of suitable tombs. Yes, they
were persons whom life had rejected, and death, as yet, refused to
accept.

Also, at times there would emerge from the long grass a homeless dog
with large, sullen eyes, eyes startling at once in their intelligence
and in their absolute Ishmaelitism--until one almost expected to hear
issue from the animal's mouth reproaches couched in human language.

And sometimes the dog would still remain halted in the cemetery as,
with tail lowered, it swayed its shelterless, shaggy head to and fro
with an air of profound reflection, while occasionally venting a
subdued, long-drawn yelp or howl.

Again, among the dense old lime trees, there would be scurrying an
unseen mob of starlings and jackdaws whose young would, meanwhile,
maintain a soft, hungry piping, a sort of gently persuasive, chirruping
chorus; until in autumn, when the wind had stripped bare the boughs,
these birds' black nests would come to look like mouldy, rag-swathed
heads of human beings which someone had torn from their bodies and
flung into the trees, to hang for ever around the white,
sugarloaf-shaped church of the martyred St. Barbara. During that autumn
season, indeed, everything in the cemetery's vicinity looked sad and
tarnished, and the wind would wail about the place, and sigh like a
lover who has been driven mad through bereavement....

Suddenly the old man halted before me on the path, and, sternly
extending a hand towards a white stone monument near us, read aloud:

"'Under this cross there lies buried the body of the respected citizen
and servant of God, Diomid Petrovitch Ussov,'" etc., etc.

Whereafter the old man replaced his hat, thrust his hands into the
pockets of his pea-jacket, measured me with eyes dark in colour, but
exceptionally clear for his time of life, and said:

"It would seem that folk could find nothing to say of this man beyond
that he was a 'servant of God.' Now, how can a servant be worthy of
honour at the hand of 'citizens'?"

"Possibly he was an ascetic," was my hazarded conjecture; whereupon the
old man rejoined with a stamp of his foot:

"Then in such case one ought to write--"

"To write what?"

"To write EVERYTHING, in fullest possible detail."

And with the long, firm stride of a soldier my interlocutor passed
onwards towards a more remote portion of th