Not till toward the evening did our adventurer slacken his pace, and think of rest and refreshment. There, then, lay before him, on either side the road, those wide patches of uninclosed land, which in England often denote the entrance to a village. Presently one or two neat cottages came in sight—then a small farm-house, with its yard and barns. And some way further yet, he saw the sign swinging before an inn of some pretensions—the sort of inn often found on a long stage between two great towns, commonly called "The Half-way House." But the inn stood back from the road, having its own separate sward in front, whereon were a great beech tree (from which the sign extended) and a rustic arbor—so that, to gain the inn, the coaches that stopped there took a sweep from the main thoroughfare. Between our pedestrian and the inn there stood naked and alone, on the common land, a church; our ancestors never would have chosen that site for it; therefore it was a modern church—modern Gothic—handsome to an eye not versed in the attributes of ecclesiastical architecture—very barbarous to an eye that was. Somehow or other the church looked cold, and raw, and uninviting. It looked a church for show—much too big for the scattered hamlet—and void of all the venerable associations which give their peculiar and unspeakable atmosphere of piety to the churches in which succeeding generations have knelt and worshiped. Leonard paused and surveyed the edifice with an unlearned but poetical gaze—it dissatisfied him. And he was yet pondering why, when a young girl passed slowly before him, her eyes fixed on the ground, opened the little gate that led into the church-yard, and vanished. He did not see the child's face; but there was something in her movements so utterly listless, forlorn, and sad, that his heart was touched. What did she there? He approached the low wall with a noiseless step, and looked over it wistfully.
There by a grave evidently quite recent, with no wooden tomb nor tombstone like the rest, the little girl had thrown herself, and she was sobbing loud and passionately. Leonard opened the gate, and approached her with a soft step. Mingled with her sobs, he heard broken sentences, wild and vain, as all human sorrowings over graves must be.
"Father! oh, father! do you not really hear me? I am so lone—so lone! Take me to you—take me!" And she buried her face in the deep grass.
"Poor child!" said Leonard, in a half whisper—"he is not there. Look above!"
The girl did not heed him—he put his arm round her waist gently—she made a gesture of impatience and anger, but she would not turn her face—and she clung to the grave with her hands.
After clear sunny days the dews fall more heavily; and now, as the sun set, the herbage was bathed in a vaporous haze—a dim mist rose around. The young man seated himself beside her, and tried to draw the child to his breast. Then she turned eagerly, indignantly, and pushed him aside with jealous arms. He profaned the grave! He understood her with his deep poet-heart, and rose. There was a pause.
Leonard was the first to break it.
"Come to your home with me, my child, and we will talk of him by the way."
"Him! Who are you? You did not know him!" said the girl, still with anger. "Go away—why do you disturb me? I do no one harm. Go—go!"
"You do yourself harm, and that will grieve him if he sees you yonder! Come!"