llyhocks and sunflowers, that stood in ordered regiments within their
high walls of clipped box. And Ruth dabbed and looked, and dabbed again,
until she suddenly found that if she put another stroke she would spoil
all, and also that her hands were stiff with cold. After a few admiring
glances at her work, she set off on a desultory journey round the
gardens to get warm, and finally, seeing an oak door in the garden-wall
open, wandered through it into the church-yard. The church door was
open, too, and Ruth, after reading some of the epitaphs on the
tombstones, went in.

It was a common little church enough, with a large mortuary chapel,
where all the Danvers family reposed; ancient Danvers lying in armor,
with their mailed hands joined, beside their wives; more modern Danvers
kneeling in bass-relief in colored plaster and execrable taste in
recesses. The last generations were there also; some of them
anticipating the resurrection and feathered wings, but for the most part
still asleep. Charles's mother was there, lying in white marble among
her husband's people, with the child upon her arm which she had taken
away with her.

And in the middle of the chapel was the last Sir Charles Danvers, whom
his brother, Sir George, the father of the present owner, had succeeded.
The evening sun shone full on the kneeling soldier figure, leaning on
its sword, and on the grave, clear-cut face, which had a look of
Charles. The long, beautifully modelled hands, clasped over the battered
steel sword-hilt, were like Charles's too. Ruth read the inscription on
the low marble pedestal, relating how he had fallen in the taking of the
Redan, and then looked again. And gradually a great feeling of pity rose
in her heart for the family which had lived here for so many
generations, and which seemed now so likely to die out. Providence does
not seem to care much for old families, or to value long descent. Rather
it seems to favor the new race--the Browns, and the Joneses, and the
Robinsons, who yesterday were not, and who to-day elbow the old county
families from the place which has known them from time immemorial.

"I suppose Molly will some day marry a Smith," said Ruth to herself,
"and then it will be all over. I don't think I will come and see her
here when she is married."

With which reflection she returned to the house, and, after disturbing
Mr. Alwynn, who was deep in a catalogue of the Danvers manuscripts, in
which it was his firm c