"I wish to Heaven I could think it was an accident," answered Beauchamp; "but that is out of the question. They say there are thoughts of pulling down the old house, if the place is not sold again very soon. How far is it?"
"Oh, not three-quarters of a mile from this," replied the gamekeeper. "Have you never seen it, Sir? It is a fine old place."
"Yes, I have seen it in former years," said Beauchamp. "Is it in this parish, then?"
"Oh yes, Sir, this is the parish church here. They all lie buried in a vault here, and their monuments are in the aisle; would you like to see them? The key is always left in this cottage. There they lie, more than twenty of them--the Moretons, I mean--for you know the man's father was not a Moreton; he was a brother of the Lord Viscount Lenham; but, when he married the heiress he took the name of Moreton, according to her father's will. His tomb is in there, and I think it runs, 'The Honourable Henry John St. Leger Moreton.' It is a plain enough tomb for such a fine gentleman as he was; but those of the Moretons are very handsome, with great figures cut in stone as big as life."
"I should like to see them," said Beauchamp, rousing himself from a reverie.
"That's easily done," answered the gamekeeper, taking a large key from a nail driven into the wall, and leading the way to a small side-door of the church.
"You tell me he was down here with the lady," said Beauchamp, as the man was opening the door. "Do you know if he is married?"
"That I can't say, Sir," answered the man. "He had a lady with him, and a strange-looking lady, too, with all manner of colours in her clothes. I saw her three days ago. She must have been a handsome-looking woman, too, when she was young; but she looks, I don't know how now."
Beauchamp tried to make him explain himself; but the man could give no better description; and, walking on into the church, they passed along from monument to monument, pausing to read the different inscriptions, the greater part of which were more intelligible to Beauchamp than his companion, as many were written in Latin. At length they came to a small and very plain tablet of modern erection, which bore the name of the last possessor of the Moreton property; and Beauchamp paused and gazed at it long, with a very sad and gloomy air.
There is always something melancholy in contemplating the final resting-place of the last of a long line. The mind naturally sums up the hopes gone by, the cherished expectations frustrated, the grandeur and the brightness passed away; the picture of many generations in infancy, manhood, decrepitude, with a long train of sports and joys, and pangs and sufferings, rises like a moving pageant to the eye of imagination; and the heart draws its own homily from the fate and history of others. But there seemed something more than this in the young gentleman's breast. His countenance was stern, as well as sad; it expressed a bitter gloom, rather than melancholy; and, folding his arms upon his chest, with a knitted brow, and teeth hard set together, he gazed upon the tablet in deep silence, till a step in the aisle behind him startled him; and, turning round, he beheld good Doctor Miles slowly pacing up the aisle towards him.