"Will the gravestone be placed in that churchyard?" They were now in another lane; and, as he spoke, the stranger checked her, and bending down to look into her face, he murmured to himself, "Is it possible?—it must be—it must!"
"Yes! I love that churchyard—my brother told me to put flowers there; and grandfather and I sit there in the summer, without speaking. But I don't talk much, I like singing better:—
"'All things that good and harmless are
Are taught, they say, to sing
The maiden resting at her work,
The bird upon the wing;
The little ones at church, in prayer;
The angels in the sky
The angels less when babes are born
Than when the aged die.'"
And unconscious of the latent moral, dark or cheering, according as we estimate the value of this life, couched in the concluding rhyme, Fanny turned round to the stranger, and said, "Why should the angels be glad when the aged die?"
"That they are released from a false, unjust, and miserable world, in which the first man was a rebel, and the second a murderer!" muttered the stranger between his teeth, which he gnashed as he spoke.
The girl did not understand him: she shook her head gently, and made no reply. A few moments, and she paused before a small house.
"This is my home."
"It is so," said her companion, examining the exterior of the house with an earnest gaze; "and your name is Fanny."
"Yes—every one knows Fanny. Come in;" and the girl opened the door with a latch-key.
The stranger bowed his stately height as he crossed the low threshold and followed his guide into a little parlour. Before a table on which burned dimly, and with unheeded wick, a single candle, sat a man of advanced age; and as he turned his face to the door, the stranger saw that he was blind.