Some cypress trees, with branches like lance-heads, sprinkled with hoar-frost, stood grave as sentinels set to guard the enclosure. Passing these, they went on and on, past the graves of the poor, scarcely distinguished by the mounds beneath the snow, until they came finally to the broad avenue of perpetual concessions.
“Father, I know where we are going,” murmured Maurice at last, thinking of his mother.
“We’re going to our family tomb,” explained Mr. Roquevillard; “to thank our dead for having saved you.”
“Father, it was you that saved me,” said Maurice.
“I was speaking in their name.”
As they drew near the end of their pilgrimage, they made out, across the empty graveyard, a black figure kneeling before the gravestone which stood just before a wall covered with inscriptions.
“Father, look; there’s some one there,” said Maurice.
“It’s Margaret! She has got here ahead of us.”
The girl heard the dull noise of their footsteps on the trodden snow, and turned her head. She blushed on recognising them, and rose, as if she would go and not be in the way at their first interview.
“I came here to be near mamma,” she said.