For years he lived silently and apart; but
when his mother died, and he and his father were left staring at the
dulled embers of life, he married a good woman, who perhaps does not
deify early dreams; yet she is tender of them, and at the death of her
own child it was she who went toiling up to the graveyard, to see that
its little place did not encroach too far. She gave no reason, but we
all knew it was because she meant to let her husband lie there by the
long-loved guest.
Naturally enough, after this incident of the forsaken grave, we
conceived a strange horror of the new Cemetery, and it has remained
deserted to this day. It is nothing but a meadow now, with that one
little grassy hollow in it to tell a piteous tale. It is mown by any
farmer who chooses to take it for a price; but we regard it differently
from any other plot of ground. It is "the Cemetery," and always will
be. We wonder who has bought the grass. "Eli's got the Cemetery this
year," we say. And sometimes awe-stricken little squads of school
children lead one another there, hand in hand, to look at the grave
where Annie Prince was going to be buried when her beau took her away.
They never seem to connect that heart-broken wraith of a lover with the
bent farmer who goes to and fro driving the cows.
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