CHAPTER XI.
THE next morning Mr. Emlyn, passing from his garden to the town of Moleswich, descried a human form stretched on the burial-ground, stirring restlessly but very slightly, as if with an involuntary shiver, and uttering broken sounds, very faintly heard, like the moans that a man in pain strives to suppress and cannot.
The rector hastened to the spot. The man was lying, his face downward, on a grave-mound, not dead, not asleep.
“Poor fellow overtaken by drink, I fear,” thought the gentle pastor; and as it was the habit of his mind to compassionate error even more than grief, he accosted the supposed sinner in very soothing tones—trying to raise him from the ground—and with very kindly words.
Then the man lifted his face from its pillow on the grave-mound, looked round him dreamily into the gray, blank air of the cheerless morn, and rose to his feet quietly and slowly. The vicar was startled; he recognized the face of him he had last seen in the magnificent affluence of health and strength. But the character of the face was changed,—so changed! its old serenity of expression, at once grave and sweet, succeeded by a wild trouble in the heavy eyelids and trembling lips.
“Mr. Chillingly,—you! Is it possible?”
“Varus, Varus,” exclaimed Kenelm, passionately, “what hast thou done with my legions?”
At that quotation of the well-known greeting of Augustus to his unfortunate general, the scholar recoiled. Had his young friend’s mind deserted him,—dazed, perhaps, by over-study?
He was soon reassured; Kenelm’s face settled back into calm, though a dreary calm, like that of the wintry day.