“I wonder why it is?” Margaret said. “Most of them never come out at all. We and the Little One come out so often. You were wise and learned. I knew so little. Will you tell me?”
“Learning is not wisdom,” Ambrose answered. “But of this matter it was said that our containment in the grave depended on the spirit in which we departed. I made certain researches. It appeared by common report that only those came out whom desperate sin tormented, or labors incomplete and great desire at the point of death made restless. I had doubts the matter were more subtle, the reasons of it reaching out distantly.” He sighed faintly, following with his eyes, tomb by tomb, the broad white path that dropped down the hillside to the church. “I desired greatly to live.”
“I, too. Is it because we desired it so much, then? But the Little One”—-
“I do not know,” he said.
The Little One trotted gravely here and there, seeming to know very well what he was about, and presently came to the spiral stone. The lettering on it was new, and there was no cherub. He dropped down suddenly on the snow, with a faint whimper. His small feet came out from under his gown, as he sat upright, gazing at the letters with round troubled eyes, and up to the top of the monument for the solution of some unstated problem.
“The stone is but newly placed,” said Ambrose, “and the newcomer would seem to be of those who rest in peace.”
They went and sat down on either side of him, on the snow. The peculiar cutting of the stone, with spirally ascending lines, together with the moon's illusion, gave it a semblance of motion. Something twisted and climbed continually, and vanished continually from the point. But the base was broad, square, and heavily lettered: “John Mareschelli Vane.”
“Vane? That was thy name,” said Ambrose.
1890. Ætat 72.
An Eminent Citizen, a Public Benefactor, and Widely Esteemed.