that the eyes of the lonely reader rested longest; his lips
murmuring several times, as he looked down on the letters:--"He lived to
be an old man--he lived to be an old man after all!"

There was sufficient vacant space left towards the bottom of the
tombstone for two or three more inscriptions; and it appeared as if Mat
expected to have seen more. He looked intently at the vacant space, and
measured it roughly with his fingers, comparing it with the space above,
which was occupied by letters. "Not there, at any rate!" he said to
himself, as he left the churchyard, and walked back to the town.

This time he entered the double shop--the hosiery division of
it--without hesitation. No one was there, but the young man who served
behind the counter. And right glad the young man looked, having been
long left without a soul to speak to on that rainy morning, to see some
one--even a stranger with an amazing skull-cap under his hat--enter the
shop at last.

What could he serve the gentleman with? The gentleman had not come to
buy. He only desired to know whether Joanna Grice, who used to keep the
dressmaker's shop, was still living?

Still living, certainly! the young man replied, with brisk civility.
Miss Grice, whose brother once had the business now carried on by
Bradford and Son, still resided in the town; and was a very curious old
person, who never went out, and let nobody inside her doors. Most of
her old friends were dead; and those who were still alive she had broken
with. She was full of fierce, wild ways; was suspected of being crazy;
and was execrated by the boys of Dibbledean as an "old tiger-cat." In
all probability, her intellects were a little shaken, years ago, by a
dreadful scandal in the family, which quite crushed them down, being
very respectable, religious people--

At this point the young man was interrupted, in a very uncivil manner,
by the stranger, who desired to hear nothing about the scandal, but who
had another question to ask. This question seemed rather a difficult one
to put; for he began it two or three times, in two or three different
forms of words, and failed to get on with it. At last, he ended by
asking, generally, whether any other members of old Mr. Grice's family
were still alive.

For a moment or so the shopman was stupid and puzzled, and asked what
other members the gentleman meant. Old Mrs. Grice had died some time
ago; and there had been two children who died young, and whose n