His instructions as to the disposal of the relics I need not dwell upon. Their consignee, a highly respectable tradesman in his line, would no doubt consider any mention of his name a considerable breach of confidence. I had my own opinion as to the laws of treasure-trove, and he may have had his as to my father. When, armed with my father’s warranty, I visited this amiable “receiver,” I found him to be an austere-looking but pleasant gentleman, with an evident enthusiasm for the scholarly side of his business. He gave me the price my father had mentioned, and bowed me to the door, with a faint blush.
It was so early in the day by the time I had finished my business that, deeming it not possible that Jason could reach the mill before the evening at earliest, I determined upon returning by an afternoon train, that I might make a visit that had been in my mind since I first knew I was to revisit London. It was to a dull and lonely cemetery out Battersea way, where a poor working girl lay at rest.
It was late in the afternoon when I came to the lodge gate of the burial-place and inquired there as to the position of the grave.
Indeed, in the quarter where I found her the graves lay so close that it seemed almost as if the coffins must touch underground.
My eyes filled with humble tears as I stood looking down on the thin green mound. A little cross of stone stood at the head and on it “D. M.” and the date of her death. The grave had been carefully tended—lovingly trimmed and weeded and coaxed to the greenest growth in those nine short months. A little bush rose stood at the foot, and on the breast of the hillock, a bunch of rich, fading flowers lay. They must have been placed there within the last two or three days only—by the same hands that had gardened the sprouting turf—that had raised the simple cross and written thereon the date of a great heart’s breaking.
I placed my own sad token of autumn flowers nearer the foot of the mound, and, going to the cross, bent and kissed it. My eyes were so blinded, my throat so strangled, that for the moment I felt as if, as I did so, it put its arms about my neck and that Dolly’s soft cheek was laid against mine. I know that I rose peaceful with the assurance of pardon; and that, by and by, that gentle, unresting spirit was to extend to me once more, in the passing of a dreadful peril, the saving beneficence of its presence.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
A FACE.
Dark was falling as on my return I came within sound of the mill race. I thought I could make out a little group of people leaning over the stone balustrade of the bridge as I approached. Such I found to be the case, and among them Dr. Crackenthorpe standing up gaunt in his long brown coat.
I was turning in at the yard, when this individual hailed me, and by doing so brought all the faces round in my direction. I walked up to him.
“Well?” I said.