What was it in that quiet graveyard that the child had come to see?
Nothing more or less than the grave of which Mrs. Pritchard sometimes spoke with tears, where the mother and five children lay sleeping, all laid to rest together within the space of one short week.
With quiet, reverent steps Bertie picked his way among the silent graves. A strange sense of loneliness had fallen upon him, and yet he was not afraid. He felt as if he were quite alone in this great Sabbath calm and stillness, with only the graves of those who had gone to keep him company.
“Under the great yew tree at the south corner.” These had been Mrs. Pritchard’s words when Bertie had asked her where the grave stood that held the Squire’s dear ones, and by this description he guided his steps.
Yes, there it was, just as Mrs. Pritchard had described—a simple slab of marble beneath the protecting shape of the ancient yew tree. There were all the familiar names—names that were now as those of familiar comrades. Bertie read them one by one with an odd dreaminess stealing over him. He sat down upon a low bough of the great tree and gazed at the marble slab with wide-open, abstracted eyes.
Where were they all now, those children who had laughed and played up and down the corridors of his present home, and had made the silent house ring again with their merry romps and happy voices? They had been children once just his age, perhaps they too had known just such thoughts as so often crowded into his busy brain. They had seen the same things that he looked on day by day; surely they must once have been very like him, and known just those very same feelings and longings as he experienced.
And where were they all now? What did they think of the bright world they had left behind? Was all forgotten as if it never had existed? or did the children who had never lived to grow old look down sometimes with smiling eyes upon the happy home they had left, and perhaps spare a loving glance for the little boy who loved them all without ever having seen them?
These thoughts crowded fast upon Bertie as he sat still in the dark yew tree. What was death? he asked himself again and again—the death that had come so very near him once, and had almost grasped its prey. What was it? What became of those who were taken away from this world! Where did they go, the children who never grew up?
And a voice in his own heart answered so clearly and softly, that the child was quite startled.
“Suffer the little children to come unto Me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven.”