Those same boughs are again silvered by the moon, and they droop over his mother’s grave. There is a little stone which bears this inscription:—
“HER HEART BRAKE IN SILENCE.”
But the silence of the churchyard is now broken by a voice—not of the youth—nor a voice of laughter and ribaldry.
“My son!—dost thou see this grave? and dost thou read the record in anguish, whereof may come repentance?”
“Of what should I repent?” answers the son; “and why should my young ambition for fame relax in its strength because my mother was old and weak?”
“Is this indeed our son?” says the father, bending in agony over the grave of his beloved.
“I can well believe I am not;” exclaimeth the youth. “It is well that you have brought me here to say so. Our natures are unlike; our courses must be opposite. Your way lieth here—mine yonder!”
So the son left the father kneeling by the grave.
Again a few years are passed. It is winter, with a roaring wind and a thick gray fog. The graves in the Church-yard are covered with snow, and there are great icicles in the Church-porch. The wind now carries a swathe of snow along the tops of the graves, as though the “sheeted dead” were at some melancholy play; and hark! the icicles fall with a crash and jingle, like a solemn mockery of the echo of the unseemly mirth of one who is now coming to his final rest.
There are two graves near the old yew tree; and the grass has overgrown them. A third is close by; and the dark earth at each side has just been thrown up. The bearers come; with a heavy pace they move along; the coffin heaveth up and down, as they step over the intervening graves.