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How the church maintained itself on that elevated and unsheltered hill, despite such winds as swept it in the winter, was almost a miracle: but there it stood as it had done for centuries gray, solitary, sublime. It was of considerable size, but small in comparison with its God's-acre, which was of vast extent, and only sparsely occupied by graves.
Each day from some house issued forth the procession of death, until all our little churchyards along the winding river had more new graves than old not to speak of that grim, unconsecrated God's-acre in the forest pass, more cruel still to think upon. And with all this to bear, there was no assurance that the morrow might not bring the torch and tomahawk of invasion to our very doors.
"I am hard of hearing." "Poor old man," said Flemming; "He is as much a ruin as the church we are entering. It will not be long before he, too, shall be sown as seed in this God's-acre!" The little girl ran into a house close at hand, and brought out the great key. The church door swung open, and, descending a few steps, they passed through a low-roofed passage into the church. All was in ruin.
Home he walked briskly, to be met under his flaming balcony by Lottchen's kindly afternoon greeting. How had mein Herr passed his Sabbath? she asked. "Quietly enough, Lottchen. I met an old philosopher in the God's-Acre, and went home with him to his shop. Have you ever heard of Herr Doctor Lebensfunke?" "Yes, mein Herr.
Mounting the few steps, he paused idly a moment on the verge of this green "God's-acre" to read a perpendicular slab on a wall, and his face broadened into a smile as he followed the absurdly elaborate biography of a rich, self-made merchant who had taught himself to read. "Reader, go thou and do likewise," was the delicious bull at the end.
The surviving brethren seem to have taken the small oblong stone, with the inscription added as directed, and to have placed it on the south side of the domed square block of brick and white plaster since renewed from time to time which stands in the left corner of the God's-acre, now consecrated by the mingled dust of four generations of missionaries, converts, and Christian people.
The headstones of Macao's God's-acre bear name after name once carried with pride on the rolls of the American, British or French naval and merchantman services, and diplomatic and consular titles are recorded on more than one headstone. It is interesting to scale the steps to inspect closely the façade of the Jesuit church of San Paulo, erected some three hundred years ago.
He rarely had an impulse to tears in the new cemetery, where his ten children were. He never left this weed-grown, forsaken old God's-acre dry-eyed. One must not construct from all this the image of a melancholy man, as his fellows met and knew him. Mr. Madden kept his griefs, racial and individual, for his own use.
There was a sepulchral tone in the voice, and well there might be, for it was a voice from the grave. Floating on the damp autumnal air, and echoing round the forest of tombs, it died away over the moors, on the edge of which the old God's-acre stood.
Some of the cracked, dilapidated tombs dated back to 1600; others marked the addition in 1788 to the original God's-acre. All was hushed; it was difficult to imagine a phantom where neglect seemed to rule. It was not in this olden part that descendants of the departed flocked on All Saints' Day to decorate the mausoleums with evergreens, plaster images and artificial immortelle garlands.
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