n, when you
entered at the gate, what a silence reigned within! I love those grand
old melancholy retreats, and so did Maud. Here the rich and poor of the
surrounding villages for miles around were buried. I passed by the
elegant marble tombs of the wealthy and the humbler grassy mounds of the
peasantry. My thoughts were filled with the shortness of human life, the
vanity of its noblest pursuits, and the equalling, never-sparing hand of
death.

Even the bracing morning air and the merry sunshine were insufficient to
dispel thoughts like these, for the spot had a solemnity of its own
about it. The abode of the dead is at all times sacred to us, even when
we find it in the heart of a populous city, amidst the bustle and stir
of daily life; but how much more is it sanctified when we discover it in
some rural and secluded spot ungrimed with the smoke of factories,
unbroken in upon by rude voices from without, and the mossy stones and
overgrown weeds and brambles of which even the hand of the trim gardener
has not disturbed.

I seated myself upon an ancient tomb, and gazed around me. Here lay a
knight of old, there a lord of the manor; yonder some poor rustic whose
humble grave of turf bore no record of the name, age, or sex of its
occupant, what its owner's deeds had been on earth, whether fruitful or
unfruitful. Close beside it rose a stately tombstone of white marble
with a long inscription. "Doubtless here lays some rich landowner," I
thought, "whose supposed virtues are here recorded in full."

I was too far off to read what was inscribed, but the tomb was a new
one. It was not there when Maud and I took our rambles together, and I
recollected all the most important gravestones. I rose and advanced a
few steps, when I suddenly halted a few paces from the tomb, and
recoiled in horror. I was seized with trembling, my heart sank, and I
felt my brow covered with a cold sweat. The letters on the monument swam
before my eyes. I brushed away a tear as I read the following lines:

SACRED TO THE MEMORY
OF
MAUD E----N,
YOUNGEST DAUGHTER OF GEORGE E----N,
OF ----
WHO DEPARTED THIS LIFE
THE 31ST OF DECEMBER, 1750.
AGED 21 YEARS.

Then followed one or two verses from the Bible.

"Oh, Maud, Maud!" I cried, in an agony, and throwing myself on her
grave, I wept bitterly.

"What says the gravestone? 'On the 31st of December,'" said I to myself.
"Go