risp turf underfoot. With a slight effort he
stooped even once again;--

'Stranger, a moment pause, and stay;
In this dim chamber hidden away
Lies one who once found life as dear
As now he finds his slumbers here:
Pray, then, the Judgement but increase
His deep, everlasting peace!'

'But then, do you know you lie at peace?' Lawford audibly questioned,
gazing at the doggerel. And yet, as his eyes wandered over the blunt
green stone and the rambling crimson-berried brier that had almost
encircled it with its thorns, the echo of that whisper rather jarred.
He was, he supposed, rather a dull creature--at least people seemed
to think so--and he seldom felt at ease even with his own small
facetiousness. Besides, just that kind of question was getting
very common. Now that cleverness was the fashion most people were
clever--even perfect fools; and cleverness after all was often only
a bore: all head and no body. He turned languidly to the small
cross-shaped stone on the other side:

'Here lies the body of Ann Hard, who died in child-bed.
Also of James, her infant son.'

He muttered the words over with a kind of mournful bitterness. 'That's
just it--just it; that's just how it goes!'... He yawned softly; the
pathway had come to an end. Beyond him lay ranker grass, one and
another obscurer mounds, an old scarred oak seat, shadowed by a few
everlastingly green cypresses and coral-fruited yew-trees. And above and
beyond all hung a pale blue arch of sky with a few voyaging clouds like
silvered wool, and the calm wide curves of stubble field and pasture
land. He stood with vacant eyes, not in the least aware how queer a
figure he made with his gloves and his umbrella and his hat among the
stained and tottering gravestones. Then, just to linger out his hour,
and half sunken in reverie, he walked slowly over to the few solitary
graves beneath the cypresses.

One only was commemorated with a tombstone, a rather unusual oval-headed
stone, carved at each corner into what might be the heads of angels,
or of pagan dryads, blindly facing each other with worn-out, sightless
faces. A low curved granite canopy arched over the grave, with a crevice
so wide between its stones that Lawford actually bent down and slid in
his gloved fingers between them. He straightened himself with a
sigh, and followed with extreme difficulty the well-nigh, illegible
inscription:

'Here lie ye Bone