n wall.

Walking up a little rise, he saw the weathercock and one turret of a
church tower peering over the edge of a small steep hill, close at hand,
and turning toward it he went briskly on, under the lee of a short fir
plantation, all the grass being pure and fresh with hoar-frost, which
melted in every hollow and shadow as fast as the sun came round to it.

The house was too large and pretentious for the grounds it stood in,
these being hardly extensive enough to be called a park; they consisted
of finely varied wood and dell, and were laid out in grass and fed off
by sheep.

He passed through a gate into the churchyard, which had a very little
valley all to itself, the land rising on every side so as to make a deep
nest for it. Such a venerable, low, long church! taking old age so
quietly, covering itself with ivy and ferns, and having a general air of
mossiness, and subsidence into the bosom of the earth again, from
whence its brown old stones had been quarried. For, as is often the case
with an old burial-place, the soil had greatly risen, so that one who
walked between the graves could see the whole interior of the place
through the windows. The tiled roof, sparkling and white with the
morning frost, was beginning to drip, and dew shone on the melting rime,
while all around the enclosure orchards were planted, and the trees
leaned over their boughs.

A woman, stepping from a cottage on the rise, held up a great key to
him, and he advanced, took it, and told her he would return it.

A large heavy thing it was, that looked as if it might be hundreds of
years old; he turned the lock with it and stepped in, walking down the
small brick aisle, observing the ancient oaken seats, the quaint pulpit,
and strange brasses; till, white, staring, obtrusive, and all out of
taste, he saw in the chancel what he had come to look for, a great white
marble monument, on the south side; four fluttering cherubs with short
wings that appeared to hold up a marble slab, while two weeping figures
knelt below. First was recorded on the slab the death of Augustus
Cuthbert Melcombe, only son of Cuthbert Melcombe, gent., of this place.
Then followed the date of his birth, and there was no date of death,
merely the information that he was a lieutenant in the Royal Navy.
Brandon copied this inscription into his note-book.

Below was the name of the young man's only sister, aged ninety-seven,
"universally beloved and respected;" then the