about a matter which,
although of no particular moment, yet touched Charlotte to the quick. We
have to mention this incident because it gave occasion for a number of
things which otherwise might perhaps have remained long untouched.

We remember certain alterations which Charlotte had made in the
churchyard. The entire body of the monuments had been removed from their
places, and had been ranged along the walls of the church, leaning
against the string-course. The remaining space had been levelled, except
a broad walk which led up to the church, and past it to the opposite
gate; and it had been all sown with various kinds of trefoil, which had
shot up and flowered most beautifully.

The new graves were to follow one after another in a regular order from
the end, but the spot on each occasion was to be carefully smoothed over
and again sown. No one could deny that on Sundays and holidays when the
people went to church the change had given it a most cheerful and
pleasant appearance. At the same time the clergyman, an old man and
clinging to old customs, who at first had not been especially pleased
with the alteration, had become thoroughly delighted with it, all the
more because when he sat out like Philemon with his Baucis under the old
linden trees at his back door, instead of the humps and mounds he had a
beautiful clean lawn to look out upon; and which, moreover, Charlotte
having secured the use of the spot to the Parsonage, was no little
convenience to his household.

Notwithstanding this, however, many members of the congregation had been
displeased that the means of marking the spots where their forefathers
rested had been removed, and all memorials of them thereby obliterated.
However well preserved the monuments might be, they could only show who
had been buried, but not where he had been buried, and the _where_, as
many maintained, was everything.

Of this opinion was a family in the neighborhood, who for many years had
been in possession of a considerable vault for a general resting-place
of themselves and their relations, and in consequence had settled a
small annual sum for the use of the church. And now this young lawyer
had been sent to cancel this settlement, and to show that his client did
not intend to pay it any more, because the conditions under which it had
been hitherto made had not been observed by the other party, and no
regard had been paid to objection and remonstrance. Charlotte, who was
the