is woman was
of vast age, and was spoken of with extreme wonder by the town's
folk."

I could not help thinking of my old childish suspicions of Lady Ferry,
though I smiled at the folly of them and of this story more than once.
I tried to remember if I had heard of her death; but I was still a
child when my cousin Agnes had died. Had poor Lady Ferry survived her?
and what could have become of her? I asked my father, but he could
remember nothing, if indeed he ever had heard of her death at all. He
spoke of our cousins' kindness to this forlorn soul, and that,
learning her desolation and her piteous history (and being the more
pitiful because of her shattered mind), when she had last wandered to
their door, they had cared for the old gentlewoman to the end of her
days--"for I do not think she can be living yet," said my father, with
a merry twinkle in his eyes: "she must have been nearly a hundred
years old when you saw her. She belonged to a fine old family which
had gone to wreck and ruin. She strayed about for years, and it was a
godsend to her to have found such a home in her last days."

That same summer we reached America, and for the first time since I
had left it I went to the ferry. The house was still imposing, the
prestige of the Haverford grandeur still lingered; but it looked
forlorn and uncared for. It seemed very familiar; but the months I had
spent there were so long ago, that they seemed almost to belong to
another life. I sat alone on the doorstep for a long time, where I
used often to watch for Lady Ferry; and forgotten thoughts and dreams
of my childhood came back to me. The river was the only thing that
seemed as young as ever. I looked in at some of the windows where the
shutters were pushed back, and I walked about the garden, where I
could hardly trace the walks, all overgrown with thick, short grass,
though there were a few ragged lines of box, and some old rose-bushes;
and I saw the very last of the flowers,--a bright red poppy, which had
bloomed under a lilac-tree among the weeds.

Out beyond the garden, on a slope by the river, I saw the family
burying-ground, and it was with a comfortable warmth at my heart that
I stood inside the familiar old enclosure. There was my Lady Ferry's
grave; there could be no mistake about it, and she was dead. I smiled
at my satisfaction and at my foolish childish thoughts, and thanked
God that there could be no truth in them, and that death comes
surely,--sa