“And where were these unfortunate creatures put to?” inquired Derrick after a pause.
“They were all buried in the churchyard yonder, sir. Sir Robert Lisgard—but there, I forgot: you may read some of their names—those at least as was identified—upon the tombstones. It was a sad sight them burials. Strangers, and very poor folks mostly, coming from miles and miles away to see their dead, who had but left home a few days before for a New World, indeed, as they call it, but little thinking as it was for that. You should hear Uncle Jacob talk of it.”
“Ah, sad, indeed,” echoed Derrick, rising from his seat. “I am glad to have met you, mate; good-night, and thank you.”
“Thank you, sir; I never tasted better baccy.”
Derrick waited until his companion had descended to the very bottom of the Cove; waited until he saw the cottage door open and shut—a mere streak of light and shadow—and then followed on his steps; but having reached the foot of the ravine, he took the winding path that led up its opposite side towards the church and Jacob Forest's high-built dwelling.
CHAPTER V. THE MEMORIAL WINDOW.
NOTWITHSTANDING that Coveton Church is “gritty,” like all the rest of the architecture in that locality, and presents the appearance of an ecclesiastical edifice swathed in sand-paper, it is by no means unpicturesque; while the spot on which it stands can compare for beauty with any God'sacre in England. It is more than a hundred feet above the level of the village, and commands a glorious view, which would be a complete panorama, but for the steep wooded hill, which protects it from the bitter north, and assists the genial climate to make a flower-garden of the churchyard three parts of the year round. Even thus early in the summer, had Ralph's visit been paid in the daytime instead of the night, he would have seen it bright with bud and blossom, for almost every grave was itself a little parterre, tended by pious hands. Poor wasted human forms, but not seldom dearer to others than the handsomest and healthiest, often come to Coveton to prolong for a little their painful lives, until they flit away like shadows; indeed, if you read the grave-stones, you will find three out of four are records of departed Youth. The newly Married pass their honeymoons at the pleasant little village, and those who have been sentenced to death by the Doctors come also thither, and a strange and touching contrast they afford.
The low large moon, was flooding the sacred place with its soft radiance, so that the inscriptions were as plain to be seen as in broad noonday. From knoll to knoll, each roofing sacred dust, Ralph wandered, not unmoved; for he too had lost a dear one by untimely death, and even now was looking for the place where haply she might lie. He would have felt it in some sort a comfort to know that her bones rested beneath the rounded turf, rather than in yonder shifting deep, although, beyond the wooded village with its scattered lights, it lay as motionless at present as a silver pall. No less than thrice, he came upon the tombs of those with whom he had been a fellow-passenger on board that doomed ship so many years ago. Time had done its work with these, and they were not easily deciphered; but he carefully spelled them out—John Robins, mate of the North Star, which foundered at sea on the night of September 14, 1832. Poor Robins! Ralph remembered him very well. They had been fellow-townsmen together at Bleamouth, a circumstance which had troubled him at first, sailing as he did under a feigned name; but they had met but once before, and the mate had, as it turned out, no remembrance of him. But Ralph well remembered what uneasiness the possibility of recognition had given him at the time, for it might have been supposed that he had committed some disgraceful crime, which would cause him, and what was worse, his wife and the Meades, to be looked upon askance throughout the voyage.