Richard went quickly away under the arching interlaced boughs of the garden trees. When he reached the road he did not turn his face towards Thornsett Edge, but went up the hill that lay at the back of the house. Across the fields, where no track was visible, but where he could have found his way blindfold, through narrow lanes with stone walls, past more than one farmstead, now settled down into the restfulness of night, always upwards he went, until he reached the little church that crowned the hill and kept watch over the dead that crowded under its shadow.
The young man passed into the graveyard and made his way to a very white stone, that showed strikingly among the dun-coloured monuments about it.
Light fleecy clouds were being blown over the face of the waning moon, and alternations of weird shadows, and still weirder lights, fell on the tombstones and on the grey, weather-beaten little church. Richard rested his hand on his father's gravestone with a caressing touch. A great wave of regret and longing swept over him, and then a sort of relief at the thought that his father could not know how his dying wish would be unfulfilled. The old man's words rang in his ears,—'It has been a long life; I should like to lie quiet at last.'
'Thank God,' said Richard. People who don't believe in God have a way of speaking as though they did in moments of emotion. 'Thank God, he can't be troubled about anything now. Dear old dad—he has that wish, at any rate. He lies quiet and beyond the reach of it all.'
He stooped and kissed the stone, almost as though it had been the face of him who lay beneath it.
AN UNEXPECTED ADHERENT.
