CHAPTER XXI.
HOW THEY RANG THE BELLS AT BEECHCOT
CHURCH.
As I walked across from the vicarage to the manor house, the moon came out in the autumn evening sky and lighted the landscape with a brightness that was little short of daylight. I stood for a few moments at the vicarage gate admiring the prospect. Far away to the eastward rose the Wolds, dark and unbroken, different indeed from the giant bulk of Orizaba, but far more beautiful to me. Beneath them lay the village of Beechcot, with its farmsteads and cottages casting black shadows upon the moonlit meadow, and here and there a rushlight burning dimly in the windows. I had kept that scene in my mind’s eye many a time during my recent tribulations, and had wondered if ever I should see it again. Now that I did see it, it was far more beautiful than I had ever known it or imagined it to be, for it meant home, and love, and peace after much sorrow.
My path led me through the churchyard. There the moonlight fell bright and clear on the silent mounds and ghostly tombstones. By the chancel I paused for a moment to glance at the monument which Sir Thurstan had long since erected to my father and mother’s memory. It was light enough to read the inscription, and also to see that a new one had been added to it. Wondering what member of our family was dead, I went nearer and examined the stone more carefully. Then I saw that the new inscription was in memory of myself!
I have never heard of a man reading his own epitaph, and truly it gave me many curious feelings to stand there and read of myself as a dead man. And yet I had been dead to all of them for more than two years.
“And of Humphrey Salkeld, only son of the above Richard Salkeld and his wife Barbara, who was drowned at Scarborough, October, 1578, to the great grief and sorrow of his uncle, Thurstan Salkeld, Knight.”
“So I am dead and yet alive,” I said, and laughed gayly at the notion. “If that is so, there are some great surprises in store for more than one in this parish. And no one will be more surprised than my worthy cousin, but he will be the only person that is sorry to see me. Oh, for half an hour with him alone!”