stood on a bluff above
the bend in the stream. It proved to be a very old building and quite a
landmark. It was called the Kittewan house. There, we learned that the
tomb we were looking for was on the bank almost opposite where our
houseboat lay.

We found it close to the creek. It was an altar-tomb, broken and
timeworn and almost covered with an accumulation of earth and moss and
leaves. One corner support and one side of the caving base were gone,
letting ferns and lichens find a home within, tender green fronds
touching the shadowing slab above them.

The strange, unremembered grave was that of a woman. For, when we had
scraped clear a little of the slab, we came upon the name Elizabeth.
Our floating home was near enough to lend shovel and broom; and we
undertook to free the tomb (that was itself being slowly buried) and to
bring to light again the chiseled story of the long-ago Elizabeth who
lay in this lonely place.

When the granite slab was uncovered and swept clean, we were able to
read most of the words upon it, although the stone was cut almost as
deep by the little fingers of rain and of frost as by the graver's
heavy hand that had itself gone to dust long ago. Slowly we found the
words telling that there rested the body of Elizabeth Hollingshorst,
whose husband, Thomas Hollingshorst, was a shipmaster; that her father
was Mr. Piner Gordon of the family of Tilliangus in Aberdeenshire,
Scotland; and that she died November 30, 1728.

The father's name, Gordon (so proud a one in Aberdeenshire), and the
use before it of the prefix Mr. (a term then synonymous with
"gentleman" and never lightly given in those days of well-defined rank)
show that this Elizabeth was of gentle birth. The words "Ship Master"
tell of how the breath of the old North Sea had called Thomas
Hollingshorst from the banks and braes and led him to point the bow of
his merchant ship across seas, bound for England's far-away colony.
Little would he dream--crowding canvas to speed his cargo to the
Virginia plantations--that his gentle-born Elizabeth was to find a
grave in that feared American wilderness.

The longer we worked over the ancient stone the more we came to feel
the pitiful meaning of it.

We felt that this Elizabeth was a true heart and a brave one, who
ventured the perilous sea-voyage of the early days with her shipmaster
husband. She did not come as other women came--to make a home in the
new land and to have friends and neig