And withal a silence which was only intensified by the steady hum of
the wind through the gnarled branches of the few churchyard trees
which turn a crouching back toward the ocean.

In all the world--save, perhaps, in the Arctic world--it would be
hard to find a picture emphasising more clearly the fact that a
man's life is but a small matter, and the memory of it like the seed
of grass upon the wind to be blown away and no more recalled.

The bearer of one of the great names of France stood knee-deep in
the sun-tanned grass and looked slowly round as if seeking to
imprint the scene upon his memory. He turned to glance at the
crumbling church behind him, built long ago by men speaking the
language in which his own thoughts found shape. He looked slowly
from end to end of the ill-kept burial ground, crowded with the
bones of the nameless and insignificant dead, who, after a life
passed in the daily struggle to wrest a sufficiency of food from a
barren soil, or the greater struggle to hold their own against a
greedy sea, had faded from the memory of the living, leaving naught
behind them but a little mound where the butcher put his sheep to
graze.

Monsieur de Gemosac was so absorbed in his reflections that he
seemed to forget his surroundings and stood above the grave, pointed
out to him by River Andrew, oblivious to the cold wind that blew in
from the sea, deaf to the clink of the sexton's inviting keys,
forgetful of his companion who stood patiently waiting within the
porch. The Marquis was a little bent man, spare of limb, heavy of
shoulder, with snow-white hair against which his skin, brown and
wrinkled as a walnut shell, looked sallow like old ivory. His face