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In full view of the windows of the street rose the sixteenth-century church which plays as best it can the part of Cathedral to Manchester. Round it stretched a black and desolate space paved with tombstones. Not a blade of grass broke the melancholy of those begrimed and time-worn slabs.

If human testimony on such subjects can be of any value, there is a body of evidence reaching from the remotest ages to the present time, as extensive and unimpeachable as is to be found in support of any thing whatever, that these shades of the dead congregate near tombstones, or take up their secret abode in the gloomy chambers of dilapidated castles, or walk by moonlight in moody solitude.

But that is only for moments of lazy leisure, not for a time when one is about to visit Brandon. At last, we were ashore and again in the "woods-way." That was the day we got into trouble, all owing to Nautica's passion for ancient tombstones. We were half way to Brandon when she concluded that it was not the manor-house that she wished to visit first, but the old graveyard.

On the farther side of the rows of sphinxes too, which he had now reached, there was not a man to be seen not a watchman even though the white limestone of the tombstones and the yellow desert-sand shone as clear in the moonlight as if they had some internal light of their own.

Here, too, there are monuments, and on the floor are many old bricks and tiles, with inscriptions on them, or Gothic devices, and flat tombstones, with coats of arms sculptured on them; as, indeed, there are everywhere else, except in the nave, where the new pavement has obliterated them.

On the opposite wall of the church, between two windows, was a mural tablet of white marble, with an inscription in black letters, the only such memorial that I could discern, although many dead people doubtless lay beneath the floor, and had paved it with their ancient tombstones, as is customary in old English churches.

Tombstones is kind to some and cussed to others, that's wot they are, and if you don't like the monument wot's at present in your kitchen, you know wot you can do." After breakfast, she beckoned Dorothy into the kitchen, and "gave notice." "Oh, Mrs. Smithers," cried Dorothy, almost moved to tears, "please don't leave me in the lurch! What should I do without you, with all these people on my hands?

Farmhouses there are at rare intervals, amid occasional patches of cultivation; there are square white-washed watch towers in groves of sacred trees; there are a few tombstones, and an occasional rudely carved god to guard the way. There are poor mud and bamboo inns with grass roofs, and dirty tables set out with half a dozen bowls of tea, and with ovens for the use of travellers.

"My friend," he began, proudly; but the butler interrupted him, saying: "No tombstones, either; there's a family graveyard and the monument's built." "The graveyard won't be needed if you will permit me to speak," said the glass-blower. "No doctors, sir; they've given up my young lady, and she's given up the doctors," continued the butler, calmly. "I'm no doctor," returned the glass-blower.

I may as well relate one of them, merely to illustrate of how little value a man's intellect may be when fate and the prejudices of the mass of men are against him. One evening, late, I myself answered a ring at the bell, and found a small black boy on the steps, a shoeless, hatless little wretch, curled darkness for hair, and teeth like new tombstones.