Rising against the screen which separated this mouldy portion of the
church from the rest, stood an old monument of carved wood, once
brilliantly painted in the portions that bore the arms of the family
over whose vault it stood, but now all bare and worn, itself gently
flowing away into the dust it commemorated. It lifted its gablet,
carved to look like a canopy, till its apex was on a level with the
book-board on the front of the organ-loft; and over--in fact upon
this apex appeared the face of the man whom I have mentioned. It was
a very remarkable countenance--pale, and very thin, without any
hair, except that of thick eyebrows that far over-hung keen,
questioning eyes. Short bushy hair, gray, not white, covered a well
formed head with a high narrow forehead. As I have said, those keen
eyes kept looking at me from under their gray eyebrows all the time
of the sermon--intelligently without doubt, but whether
sympathetically or otherwise I could not determine. And indeed I
hardly know yet. My vestry door opened upon a little group of
graves, simple and green, without headstone or slab; poor graves,
the memory of whose occupants no one had cared to preserve. Good men
must have preceded me here, else the poor would not have lain so
near the chancel and the vestry-door. All about and beyond were
stones, with here and there a monument; for mine was a large parish,
and there were old and rich families in it, more of which buried
their dead here than assembled their living. But close by the
vestry-door, there was this little billowy lake of grass. And at
the end of the narrow path leading from the door, was the churchyard
wall, with a few steps on each side of it, that the parson might
pass at once from the churchyard into his own shrubbery, here
tangled, almost matted, from luxuriance of growth. But I would not
creep out the back way from among my people. That way might do very