[CHAPTER IV.]
THE TOMB BENEATH THE CEDARS.
THE last evening before the removal of the family from the Moat, the moon shone out brightly at intervals from a cloudy sky, touching with silvery light the gables and turrets of the mansion, the old church tower, and the edges of the tombstones that nestled amidst the grass and shrubs. Beneath three fine old cedars which wrapped one spot in the churchyard in gloom, was the family vault of the Falconers, and thither from her last visit to the cottage of the dying gardener, Mrs. Falconer directed her steps.
It was not with any superstitious or fanciful idea of communing with her husband's spirit that she sought the place where his dust reposed, but, with the natural tenderness of a bereaved heart for the hiding-place of something it has loved and lost, she liked to associate her farewell to the home in which he had left her, with the remembrance of that separation which had made her life a lonely pilgrimage, and her heart for a long time a mere storm-swept wreck.
But she did not now forget that he whom she so deeply loved and truly mourned was "absent from the body," and because of his faith in a crucified Redeemer was "present with the Lord."
And though the tomb that enclosed the mortal part was to her a consecrated memorial place, yet she could calmly leave that behind, in the knowledge that the Saviour and His heaven, where the hosts of the blessed are, cannot be limited by time or space, and would be as real and near in the crowded haunts of busy life as in the moonlighted solitude of the grave beneath the cedars.
There the gentle voice of the much-tried mother soothed her excited boy, and her loving arm encircled him as they leaned together over the marble slab that bore the record of so many honoured names.
"Guy, my son," she whispered, "here let all your wrong feelings be laid aside, and your young life be consecrated to new and noble purposes."
"Oh, mother, it is so hard," murmured the boy.