The children knelt down to read the letters. They were a tender record of the sorrow of parents for the loss of a child.
And as they examined further they found that every stone beneath their feet bore some similar memorial words.
"Can we be right?" said the boy with a shudder. "I thought we were coming to a house of worship. We seem to have come into a house of graves."
They sat down sad and perplexed on the base of one of the pillars.
As they sat there silent, hand in hand, the sound of soft music, happy, and of an overpowering sweetness, came to them they could not tell whence, faint, and yet not, it seemed, far off, more as if there were some barrier between them and it. It seemed around, above, everywhere; yet the ear could fix on no point to trace it to that they might follow it.
Soon it ceased. But then the strains were taken up by voices nearer at hand. This second music had not the delicious perfectness of the first. Individual voices could be distinctly heard, not blended into a perfect whole; and some of these were harsh, some were shrill, some tremulous and broken as if with tears, some too low with fear, some too high as if from eagerness to be heard; yet the tones were those of reverent worship, and something of the joy of the first music broke through them often, like the sunbeams through the dim, chill air.
"We will go near and try to join," said the children. As they went towards the sound they saw some lamps which had hitherto been hidden from them by the pillars. These lit up the forms of a kneeling company of worshippers.
The children came near, and knelt in adoration beside them. In the worship their hearts took wing and rose into the light, and for a time they forgot the chill and the gloom.
Yet, even as they knelt, they saw that the little company was not abiding. There was a continual movement and change in it. The voices changed. The sweetest and best trained were continually breaking off, in obedience to some summons the children could not hear; and others who, like themselves, had all their music to learn, were coming in their place.
An awe and trembling came again over the children; and the brother whispered,—