f the forsaken grave, we
conceived a strange horror of the new Cemetery, and it has remained
deserted to this day. It is nothing but a meadow now, with that one
little grassy hollow in it to tell a piteous tale. It is mown by any
farmer who chooses to take it for a price; but we regard it differently
from any other plot of ground. It is "the Cemetery," and always will be.
We wonder who has bought the grass. "Eli's got the Cemetery this year,"
we say. And sometimes awe-stricken little squads of school children
lead one another there, hand in hand, to look at the grave where Annie
Prince was going to be buried when her beau took her away. They never
seem to connect that heart-broken wraith of a lover with the bent farmer
who goes to and fro driving the cows. He wears patched overalls, and has
sciatica in winter; but I have seen the gleam of youth awakened, though
remotely, in his eyes. I do not believe he ever quite forgets; there are
moments, now and then, at dusk or midnight, all his for poring over
those dulled pages of the past.

After we had elected to abide by our old home, we voted an enlargement
of its bounds; and thereby hangs a tale of outlawed revenge. Long years
ago "old Abe Eaton" quarreled with his twin brother, and vowed, as the
last fiat of an eternal divorce, "I won't be buried in the same yard
with ye!"

The brother died first; and because he lay within a little knoll beside
the fence, Abe willfully set a public seal on that iron oath by
purchasing a strip of land outside, wherein he should himself be buried.
Thus they would rest in a hollow correspondence, the fence between. It
all fell out as he ordained, for we in Tiverton are cheerfully willing
to give the dead their way. Lax enough is the helpless hand in the
fictitious stiffness of its grasp; and we are not the people to deny it
holding, by courtesy at least. Soon enough does the sceptre of
mortality crumble and fall. So Abe was buried according to his wish. But
when necessity commanded us to add unto ourselves another acre, we took
in his grave with it, and the fence, falling into decay, was never
renewed. There he lies, in affectionate decorum, beside the brother he
hated; and thus does the greater good wipe out the individual wrong.

So now, as in ancient times, we toil steeply up here, with the dead upon
his bier; for not often in Tiverton do we depend on that uncouth
monstrosity, the hearse. It is not that we do not own one,--a rigid box
of