solemn words used before
death by the aged patriarch, "I have waited for Thy Salvation, O Lord."
All about the chancel were various small tablets in memory of the
successive vicars of the place and their families, but no others with
the name of Melcombe on them. The whole building was so overflowing with
the records of human creatures, inside and out, it appeared as if so
saturated with man's thoughts, so used to man's prayers and tears, so
about presently to decline and subside into the earth as he does, that
there was almost an effort in believing that it was empty of the beings
it seemed to be a part of--empty of those whom we call the living.

It was easy to move reverently and feel awed in the face of this
venerable ancientry. This was the place, then, where that poor woman had
worshipped whose son "had never judged her."

"If I settled," he thought, "in a new country, this is the sort of scene
that, from time to time, would recur to my thoughts and get hold of me,
with almost intolerable power to make life one craving for home.

"How hard to take root in a soil my fathers never ploughed! Let me abide
where my story grew, where my dead are laid, in a country full of days,
full of the echoes of old Englishmen's talk, and whose sunsets are
stained as if with the blood shed for their liberties."

He left the church, noticing, as he went down the aisle, numbers of
dogs'-eared books in the different pews, and the narrow window at the
east end now letting in long shafts of sunshine; but there was nothing
to inform him of any fact that threw light on his step-father's letter,
and he returned the key to the sexton's wife, and went back to
breakfast, telling Mrs. Melcombe where he had been, and remarking that
there was no date of death on Augustus Melcombe's tomb.

"I think they did not know the date," she replied. "It was during the
long French war that he died, and they were some time uncertain of the
fact, but at length the eldest son going to London, wrote his mother an
account of how he had met with the captain of his young uncle's ship,
and had been told of his death at sea, somewhere near the West Indies.
The dear grandmother showed me that letter," observed Mrs. Melcombe,
"when first I married."

Brandon listened attentively, and when he was alone set that down also
in his note-book, then considering that neither the ghost nor the young
lieutenant need trouble him further, he felt that all his suspicions
were