grass, one and another obscurer mounds, an old scarred oak seat,
shadowed by a few everlastingly green cypresses and coral-fruited
yew-trees. And above and beyond all hung a pale blue arch of sky
with a few voyaging clouds like silvered wool, and the calm wide
curves of stubble field and pasture land. He stood with vacant
eyes, not in the least aware how queer a figure he made with his
gloves and his umbrella and his hat among the stained and
tottering gravestones. Then, just to linger out his hour, and
half sunken in reverie, he walked slowly over to the few solitary
graves beneath the cypresses.

One only was commemorated with a tombstone, a rather unusual
oval-headed stone, carved at each corner into what might be the
heads of angels, or of pagan dryads, blindly facing each other
with worn-out, sightless faces. A low curved granite canopy
arched over the grave, with a crevice so wide between its stones
that Lawford actually bent down and slid in his gloved fingers
between them. He straightened himself with a sigh, and followed
with extreme difficulty the well-nigh, illegible inscription:

'Here lie ye Bones of one,
Nicholas Sabathier, a Stranger to this Parish,
who fell by his own Hand on ye
Eve of Ste. Michael and All Angels.
MDCCXXXIX

Of the date he was a little uncertain. The 'Hand' had lost its
'n' and 'd'; and all the 'Angels' rain had erased. He was not
quite sure even of the 'Stranger.' There was a great rich 'S,'
and the twisted tail of a 'g' ; and, whether or not, Lawford