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I hope there is nothing amiss with the sister of my old pupil? I hope no bereavement has befallen her. I hope she is in no affliction? Has lost no relation? Mr Milvey thought this a man with a very odd manner, and a dark downward look; but he answered in his usual open way. 'I am glad to tell you, Mr Headstone, that the sister of your old pupil has not sustained any such loss.
"She was a very dear playmate of my childhood. I have brought these flowers to put upon her grave. Shall we go together?" The girl's eyes filled, and she pointed to the rising mound at her feet. Silently we bent over and reverently laid the lilies and forget-me-nots under the simple headstone. "May I talk to you of your mother?" I asked.
Her brother Andrew, a fine lad, I had sent to the college at Glasgow, at my own cost; and when he came out to the burial, he stayed with me a month, for the manse after her decease was very dull, and it was during this visit that he gave me an inkling of his wish to go out to India as a cadet, but the transactions anent that fall within the scope of another year as well as what relates to her headstone, and the epitaph in metre, which I indicated myself thereon; John Truel the mason carving the same, as may be seen in the kirkyard, where it wants a little reparation and setting upright, having settled the wrong way when the second Mrs Balwhidder was laid by her side.
If you enter the kirkyard, you'll read, on his headstone, only that, and the date of his death. Dawn restored me to common sense. I rose, and went into the garden, as soon as I could see, to ascertain if there were any footmarks under his window. There were none.
Approaching nearer and nearer, the bargeman became Bradley Headstone, in rough water-side second-hand clothing. 'Wish I may die, said Riderhood, smiting his right leg, and laughing, as he sat on the grass, 'if you ain't ha' been a imitating me, T'otherest governor! Never thought myself so good-looking afore!
Mavis also discovered where Miss Nippett was buried, and, finding that the grave had no headstone, she ordered one. To Mrs Scatchard and her niece she made handsome presents, and gave Mr Napper a finely bound edition of the hundred best books; whilst Mr and Mrs Trivett were made comfortable for life. Mavis was unable to find two people she was anxious to help.
Not only is this an early and well-accomplished effort, but it is remarkable for the presence of a lower jaw, which is seldom seen on a gravestone. The skull turned up by the sexton is usually the typical object, and to that we may presume the nether jaw is not often attached. It is found, however, on a headstone of a somewhat weak design in Old Hornsey Churchyard.
What was there impressive about such a sight when you went into a house and paid a franc to be shown the gold ornaments picked up about the place? Here, however, was a perfect series of those strange memorials, with the long lanes leading up to a circle, and the tallest of all the stones placed on the western side of the circle, perhaps as the headstone of the buried chief.
The grave is surrounded by a low wall of loose stones, to which each visitor adds one, and in the course of ages the cairn may grow to a good size. The explorer lies there without name or headstone to mark his awful resting-place. The mountain is his monument. He is alone with its majesty.
Bradley Headstone is really a successful villain; so successful that he fully captures our sympathies. Also there is something original in the very conception. The other good conception is the boy, Bradley Headstone's pupil, with his dull, inexhaustible egoism, his pert, unconscious cruelty, and the strict decorum and incredible baseness of his views of life.
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