side the road those wide patches of uninclosed land which in England
often denote the entrance to a village. Presently one or two neat
cottages came in sight; then a small farmhouse, with its yard and barns.
And some way farther yet, he saw the sign swinging before an inn of some
pretensions,--the sort of inn often found on a long stage between two
great towns commonly called "The Halfway House." But the inn stood back
from the road, having its own separate sward in front, whereon was a
great beech-tree (from which the sign extended) and a rustic arbour; so
that to gain the inn, the coaches that stopped there took a sweep from
the main thoroughfare. Between our pedestrian and the inn there stood,
naked and alone, on the common land, a church; our ancestors never would
have chosen that site for it; therefore it was a modern church,--modern
Gothic; handsome to an eye not versed in the attributes of ecclesiastical
architecture, very barbarous to an eye that was. Somehow or other the
church looked cold and raw and uninviting. It looked a church for show,
--much too big for the scattered hamlet, and void of all the venerable
associations which give their peculiar and unspeakable atmosphere of
piety to the churches in which succeeding generations have knelt and
worshipped. Leonard paused and surveyed the edifice with an unlearned
but poetical gaze; it dissatisfied him. And he was yet pondering why,
when a young girl passed slowly before him, her eyes fixed on the ground,
opened the little gate that led into the churchyard, and vanished. He
did not see the child's face; but there was something in her movements so
utterly listless, forlorn, and sad that his heart was touched. What did
she there? He approached the low wall with a noiseless step, and looked
over it wistfully.

There by a grave, evidently quite recent, with no wooden tomb nor
tombstone like the rest, the little girl had thrown herself, and she was
sobbing loud and passionately. Leonard opened the gate, and approached