"Oh, Hugh held him up out of the water most of the time," said Bessie quickly; "the mother told me that his little knitted shirt was scarcely wet at all. I must certainly go East to see the child next spring, now that his father is dead, I feel more at liberty to assist Mrs. Stanly, and, between us, we are going to give little Hugh the best education the country will allow."
"Is that you, Sibyl?" said Aunt Faith's voice within.
"Yes, aunt. Shall we come in?" said Mrs. Leslie, rising.
"No, dear, I will come out;" and Aunt Faith joined the group on the piazza, taking her seat in an arm-chair.
"What a beautiful afternoon!" she said, "and how brilliant those maple-leaves are! Have you seen the monument, John?"
"No," answered Mr. Leslie; "is it in place?"
"Yes, the work was all finished this morning, and Bessie and I went over to look at it. Why not walk over now? We can all go, and these lovely days cannot last long."
"I should like to go, John, if you have the time," said Sibyl.
"Yes; I can postpone the visit I intended to make. As Aunt Faith says, these warm, still days cannot last long."
The cemetery was about half a mile distant, a forest glade sloping to the lake, with a brook in a little ravine running through the centre. But few graves were there, for the land was but newly consecrated to its use, but the great forest-trees were old, and in the spring, wild flowers grew everywhere, and wild birds sang in the foliage. Now, the trees were dyed in scarlet and gold, and the colored leaves dropped slowly down upon the ground, for the air was still and hazy with the purple mists of Indian summer. Hugh's monument stood on a little eminence overlooking the lake. It was of marble, a slender shaft broken at the top, with a profusion of roses growing over the broken place, carved in the marble with life-like fidelity, so that the stone itself seemed to have blossomed. Below, on one side of the base was Hugh's name and age, and on the opposite face was the sentence, "I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me."