How lovely the place looked to Christie’s unaccustomed eyes! They were not alone. There were groups here and there among the graves—some of them mourners, as their dress showed, others enjoying the loveliness of the place, untroubled by any painful remembrance of the loved and lost. Slowly they wandered up and down, making long pauses in shady places, lingering over the graves of little children which loving hands had adorned. Christie wandered over the little nameless graves, longing to find where her dear ones lay.
“How beautiful it is! It is a very sweet resting-place,” she said to herself, many times.
Yes, it was a very lovely spot. A strange feeling of awe stole over Christie’s spirit as she gazed around on the silent city. As far as the eye could reach it extended. Among the trees and on the sunny hill-sides rose many a stately monument of granite and marble, with, oh, so many a nameless grave between! Close at their feet lay a large unenclosed space, where the graves lay close together, in long, irregular lines—men and women and little children—with not a mark to tell who slumbered beneath. It was probably the burial-place of strangers, or of those who died in the hospitals. To Christie it had a very dreary and forsaken look. She shuddered as she gazed on the place.
“A friend’s grave could never be found among so many,” said she. “See! there are a few with a bit of board, and a name written on it; but most of them have no mark. I would far rather be laid in our own kirk-yard at home—though that is a dreary place, too, when the sun doesna shine.”
They moved on together; and in a place which was half in the sunshine and half in the shade, they sat down. In a little while the pleasant influence of the scene chased the dreariness from Christie’s thoughts, and she looked about with eyes that did not seem able to satisfy themselves with its beauty.
“How lovely it is here!” she repeated. “How green and fresh everything is! The very grass seems beautiful!” And she caressed with her hand the smooth turf on which they were seated.
“It’s a wonder to me how people can choose to live in the midst of a town, with nothing to see that’s bonny but a strip of blue sky now and then.”
“It’s a wonder to me,” said John, smiling.
“Oh, but I mean people that may live wherever they choose. There are people that like the town best. Where it is right to stay, I suppose one can be content in time. I think if I hadna home and the rest to think about and wish for, I might be willing to live here always. But at first—oh, I thought I could never, never stay! But I am not sorry I came. I shall never be sorry for that.”
There was something in her earnest manner, and in the happy look that came over her face as she spoke, that arrested the attention of John; and he said: