“There she must have breathed her last!”
After this speech, more sighing, accompanied by still surer signs of sorrow—sobs and weeping. As the moonbeams, pouring in through the open window, fall upon his face, their pale silvery light sparkles upon tears, streaming from hollow eyes, chasing one another down emaciated cheeks.
After surrendering himself some minutes to what appears a very agony of grief, he turns out of the sleeping chamber; passes through the narrow hall-way; and on into the porch. Not now the back one, but that facing front to the road.
On the other side of this is an open tract of ground, half cleared, half woodland; the former sterile, the latter scraggy. It seems to belong to no one, as if not worth claiming, or cultivating. It has been, in fact, an appanage of Colonel Armstrong’s estate, who had granted it to the public as the site for a schoolhouse, and a common burying-ground—free to all desiring to be instructed, or needing to be interred. The schoolhouse has disappeared, but the cemetery is still there—only distinguishable from the surrounding terrain by some oblong elevations, having the well-known configuration of graves. There are in all about a score of them; some having a plain head-board—a piece of painted plank, with letters rudely limned, recording the name and age of him or her resting underneath.
Time and the weather have turned most of them greyish, with dates decayed, and names scarcely legible. But there is one upon which the paint shows fresh and white; in the clear moonlight gleaming like a meteor.
He who has explored the deserted dwelling, stands for a while with eyes directed on this recently erected memorial. Then, stepping down from the porch, he passes through the wicket-gate; crosses the road; and goes straight towards it, as though a hand beckoned him thither.
When close up, he sees it to be by a grave upon which the herbage has not yet grown.
The night is a cold one—chill for that Southern clime. The dew upon the withered grass of the grave turf is almost congealed into hoar frost, adding to its ghostly aspect.
The lettering upon the head-board is in shadow, the moon being on the opposite side.
But stooping forward, so as to bring his eyes close to the slab, he is enabled to decipher the inscription.