‘And is this very old?’
‘Oh yes, it’s old right enough, as things go; but even age, perhaps, is mainly an affair of the imagination. There’s a tombstone near that little old hawthorn, and there are two others side by side under the wall, still even legibly late seventeenth century. That’s pretty good weathering.’ He smiled faintly. ‘Of course, the church itself is centuries older, drenched with age. But she’s still sleep-walking while these old tombstones dream. Glow-worms and crickets are not such bad bedfellows.’
‘What interested me most, I think,’ said Lawford haltingly, ‘was this.’ He pointed with his stick to the grave at his feet.
‘Ah, yes, Sabathier’s,’ said the stranger; ‘I know his peculiar history almost by heart.’
Lawford found himself staring with unusual concentration into the rather long and pale face. ‘Not, I suppose,’ he resumed faintly—‘not, I suppose, beyond what’s there.’
His companion leant his hand on the old stooping tombstone. ‘Well, you know, there’s a good deal there’—he stooped over—‘if you read between the lines. Even if you don’t.’
‘A suicide,’ said Lawford, under his breath.
‘Yes, a suicide; that’s why our Christian countrymen have buried him outside of the fold. Dead or alive, they try to keep the wolf out.’
‘Is this, then, unconsecrated ground?’ said Lawford.
‘Haven’t you noticed,’ drawled the other, ‘how green the grass grows down here, and how very sharp are poor old Sabathier’s thorns? Besides, he was a stranger, and they—kept him out.’