d
I fell, twisting my ankle and narrowly saving myself from an ugly
sprain. I had stumbled in a hollow, shallow depression between the
mounds. Picking myself up, I saw that to left and right and all
around me the turf was ridged with similar mounds, the whole
enclosure full of them. In a flash I read the meaning of the
white-painted boards. Yes--and there was writing on them, too--no
words, but single letters and dates, roughly painted in black--
"O. M., 1796"--"R. A. S., 1796"--"P d. V. and A. M. d. V., 1800"--
these, and perhaps two score of others. The shape of the mounds
interpreted these inscriptions.

I was in a graveyard.

I sat helpless for a minute, dreadfully scanning the gloom through
which the massed palmetto-tops admitted but a shaft of light here and
there. The flies, which had been a nuisance across the stream, here
swarmed in myriads so thick that they seemed to hang in clusters from
the boughs; and their incessant buzzing added to the horror of the
place a hint of something foul, sinister, almost obscene.

I had a mind to creep away on all-fours, but suddenly forgot my ankle
and sprang erect, on the defensive, at the sound of voices. A grassy
path led through the enclosure, between the graves, and at the end of
it appeared two figures.

They were two women; the first a negress, short, squat, and ugly,
wearing a frock of the gaudiest yellow, and for head-dress a scarlet
handkerchief, bound closely about her scalp and tied in front with an
immense bow; the other--but how shall I describe the other?

She was white, and she wore a dress of fresh white muslin; a short
dress, tied about the waist with a pale-blue sash, and above the
shoulders with narrow ribbons of the same colour. Her figure was
that of a girl; her ringlets hung loose like a girl's. She walked
with a girlish step; and until she came close I took her for a girl
of sixteen or seventeen.

Then, with a shock, I found myself staring into the face, which might
well belong to a woman between sixty and seventy, so faded it was and
reticulated with wrinkles; and into a pair of eyes that wavered
between ingenuousness and a childish cunning; and from them down to
her slim ankles and a pair of dancing-shoes, so fairy-like and
diminutive that they seemed scarcely to press the grass underfoot.

The pair had drawn to a halt, while I stood uncertain whether to
brave them or make a bid for escape. I heard the negress cry aloud
in a foreig