Chapter 17
Hazel sat on a large flat gravestone with Foxy beside her. They were like a sculpture in marble on some ancient tomb. Coming, so soon after her strange moment of terror in the quarry, to this place of the dead, she was smitten with formless fear. The crosses and stones had, on that storm-beleaguered hillside, an air of horrible bravado, as if they knew that although the winds were stronger than they, yet they were stronger than humanity; as if they knew that the whole world is the tomb of beauty, and has been made by man the torture-chamber of weakness.
She looked down at the lettering on the stone. It was a young girl's grave.
'Oh!' she muttered, looking up into the tremendous dome of blue, empty and adamantine—'oh! dunna let me go young! What for did she dee so young? Dunna let me! dunna!'
And the vast dome received her prayer, empty and adamantine.
She was suddenly panic-stricken; she ran away from the tombs calling
Edward's name.
And Edward came on the instant. His hands were full of cabbage which he had been taking to the rabbit.
'What is it, little one?'
'These here!'
'The graves?'