“I’ve often wondered,” said Uncle Lawrence, with quick sagacity, divining a scientific truth which has since been demonstrated, “if there wasn’t a connection between these great fires and the rains which nigh a’most always follow ‘em. I’ve observed, neighbors, nine times out of ten, that a fire in the woods brought a deluge of rain close on its heels.”
“That’s a fact, anyhow,” said one of his hearers, with a puzzled look, “though I never thought of it afore.”
“The Lord is always merciful,” continued Uncle Lawrence. “If he didn’t send these rains, I don’t know what would become of us, for mortal man couldn’t put out such a fire. It’s skeered the deer clear off their old haunts, for I met one at the crossing of the branch in the main road, as I came to meetin’.”
After awhile, Major Gordon left the group conversing and turned aside into the grave-yard, on the right of the church. It was a spot that might have been selected for an elegy as fittingly as that of Stoke-Pogis. There were few headstones in that humble cemetery; no pompous heraldic emblems; nothing of the usual vanities of life, that seem, in similar places, such a mockery of death. Good and true men, who, in their lowly walk, had lived more nobly than Pharaohs who now slumber beneath pyramids, or conquerors who repose under marble mausoleums, slept there unheralded, and forgotten by all, except by the descendants who still reverenced their virtues, and by that Omniscience in whose eyes the sainted poor are “beyond all price.” As the Major stood, thoughtfully regarding the graves, he heard a step behind him, and turning was accosted by Uncle Lawrence.
“A sweet, quiet spot, sir,” said the old man. “Just such a place as seems fit to lay this mortal body in, to await the resurrection. Some day, I shall sleep here myself. Yonder,” he continued, pointing to the right hand, close to the fence, and about half way down the little cemetery, “is the corner I should choose of all others. I have thought of it so often that I have got a sort of home feeling for the spot. I never could understand,” he added, “how folks can have grave-yards in cities; it seems kind of natural like, however, to be buried where the birds can sing, and the grass grows above you.”
“You view the grave with no horror, I see,” said his companion. “It is a noble state of feeling, and eminently Christian, for the old Pagans had nothing like it.”
“I bless God,” said the patriarch, “that I have no fear of death. It is but casting off this old garment of the flesh, and, when a little while has past, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump, I shall be raised again.” And, leaning on his staff, he looked above, reminding his hearer, for the moment, of Elijah, when the prophet saw the chariot of fire.
If Major Gordon had retained any of his yesterday’s anger, its last traces vanished now. His mind was attuned by the calm yet elevated conversation of his companion to the services of the day, and the solemn thoughts they merited. In this mood he followed the veteran into the church.
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE COUNTRY CHURCH
You raised these hallowed walls; the desert smil’d,
And Paradise was opened in the wild.
No weeping orphan saw his father’s stores
Our shrines irradiate, or emblaze our floors;
No silver saints, by dying misers given,
Here bribe the rage of ill-requited Heaven;
But such plain roofs as piety could raise,
And only vocal with the Maker’s praise. —Pope.