y clustered
within an old inclosure. The brief memorials engraved upon them told
us how inveterately Death had pursued his ancient vocation and
gathered in his relentless tribute from young and old in times past
as he does to-day.

Here was a theme for a sermon from the patriarch, who now leaned upon
his hoe and shook his head with a slow ruminative motion, as if he
hoped by this action to disengage from it some profound moral
reflections, and then began to enumerate how many of these good
people he had helped to bury; but before he had well begun this
discourse we had turned away and were about leaving the place, when
he recalled us by saying, "I have got one tombstone yet to show you,
as soon as I can clear it off with the hoe: it belongs to old Master
Rousby, who was stobbed aboard ship, and is, besides that, the
grandest tombstone here."

Here was another of those flashes of light by which my story seemed
to be preordained to a prosperous end. We eagerly encouraged the old
man to this task, and he went to work in removing the green sod from
a large slab which had been entirely hidden under the soil, and in a
brief space revealed to us a tombstone fully six feet long, upon
which we were able to read, in plainly chiselled letters, an
inscription surmounted by a carved heraldic shield with its proper
quarterings and devices.

Our group at this moment would have made a fine artistic study. There
was this quiet landscape around us garnished with the beauty of May;
there were the rustic tombs,--the old negro, with a countenance
surcharged with the expression of solemn satisfaction at his
employment, bending his aged figure over the broad, carved stone, and
scraping from it the grass which had not been disturbed perhaps for a
quarter of a century; and there was our own party looking on with
eager interest, as the inscription every moment became more legible.
That interest may be imagined, on reading the inscription, which,
when brought to the full light of day, revealed these words:--

"Here lyeth the body of Xph'r Rousbie Esquire, who was taken out of
this world by a violent death received on board his Majesty's ship
The Quaker Ketch, Capt. Tho's. Allen Commander, the last day of
October 1684. And also of Mr. John Rousbie, his brother, who departed
this naturall life on board the Ship Baltimore, being arrived in
Patuxen the first day of February 1685."

This was a picturesque incident in its scenic character, but a