left its original harmony broken up into fragments each impressive in
itself, but running one into the other with an abrupt discord, as a harp
played upon by the winds. For, after this evident effort at self-
consolation or self-support in soothing or strengthening others, suddenly
Darrell's head fell again upon his breast, and he walked on, up the
village lane, heeding no longer either the open doors of expectant
cottagers or the salutation of humble passers-by. "And I could have been
so happy here!" he said suddenly. "Can I not be so yet? Ay, perhaps,
when I am thoroughly old,--tied to the world but by the thread of an
hour. Old men do seem happy; behind them, all memories faint, save those
of childhood and sprightly youth; before them, the narrow ford, and the
sun dawning up through the clouds on the other shore. 'T is the critical
descent into age in which man is surely most troubled; griefs gone, still
rankling; nor-strength yet in his limbs, passion yet in his heart-
reconciled to what loom nearest in the prospect,--the armchair and the
palsied head. Well! life is a quaint puzzle. Bits the most incongruous
join into each other, and the scheme thus gradually becomes symmetrical
and clear; when, lo! as the infant claps his hands and cries, 'See! see!
the puzzle is made out!' all the pieces are swept back into the box,--
black box with the gilded nails. Ho! Lionel, look up; there is our
village church, and here, close at my right, the churchyard!"

Now while Darrell and his young companion were directing their gaze to
the right of the village lane, towards the small gray church,--towards
the sacred burial-ground in which, here and there amongst humbler graves,
stood the monumental stone inscribed to the memory of some former
Darrell, for whose remains the living sod had been preferred to the
family vault; while both slowly neared the funeral spot, and leaned,
silent and musing, over the rail that fenced it from the animals turned
to graze on the sward of the surrounding green,--a foot-traveller, a