I made concessions, and now they are allowed to go to a deserted little
burying-ground on the west side of it when the wind is in the west; and
there at least they can hear the frogs, and sometimes, if they are
patient, catch a delightful glimpse of them.

The graveyard is in the middle of a group of pines that bounds the Frau
Inspector's garden on that side, and has not been used within the memory
of living man. The people here love to make their little burying-grounds
in the heart of a wood if they can, and they are often a long way away
from the church to which they belong because, while every hamlet has its
burying-ground, three or four hamlets have to share a church; and indeed
the need for churches is not so urgent as that for graves, seeing that,
though we may not all go to church, we all of us die and must be buried.
Some of these little cemeteries are not even anywhere near a village,
and you come upon them unexpectedly in your drives through the woods--
bits of fenced-in forest, the old gates dropping off their hinges, the
paths green from long disuse, the unchecked trees casting black,
impenetrable shadows across the poor, meek, pathetic graves. I try
sometimes, pushing aside the weeds, to decipher the legend on the almost
speechless headstones; but the voice has been choked out of them by
years of wind, and frost, and snow, and a few stray letters are all that
they can utter--a last stammering protest against oblivion.

The Man of Wrath says all women love churchyards. He is fond of sweeping
assertions, and is sometimes curiously feminine in his tendency to infer
a general principle from a particular instance. The deserted little
forest burying-grounds interest and touch me because they are so
solitary, and humble, and neglected, and forgotten, and because so many
long years have passed since tears were shed over the newly made graves.
Nobody cries now for the husband, or father, or brother buried there;