er path,
amidst sweeping pine branches and hanging creepers, some of them
prickly, which threw themselves all across the way. It was not easy
getting along. I remarked that nobody seemed to come there much.

"I never came here myself," said Preston, "but I know it must lead out
upon the river somewhere, and that's what I am after. Hollo! we are
coming to something. There is something white through the trees. I
declare, I believe----"

Preston had been out in his reckoning, and a second time had brought me
where he did not wish to bring me. We came presently to an open place, or
rather a place where the pines stood a little apart; and there in the
midst was a small enclosure. A low brick wall surrounded a square bit of
ground, with an iron gate on one side of the square; within, the grassy
plot was spotted with the white marble of tombstones. There were large
and small. Overhead, the great pine trees stood and waved their long
branches gently in the wind. The place was lonely and lovely. We had
come, as Preston guessed, to the river, and the shore was here high; so
that we looked down upon the dark little stream far below us. The
sunlight, getting low by this time, hardly touched it; but streamed
through the pine trees and over the grass, and gilded the white marble
with gold.

"I did not mean to bring you here," said Preston, "I did not know I
was bringing you here. Come, Daisy--we'll go and try again."

"Oh stop!" I said--"I like it. I want to look at it."

"It is the cemetery," said Preston. "That tall column is the monument
of our great--no, of our great-great-grandfather; and this brown one
is for mamma's father. Come, Daisy!----"

"Wait a little," I said. "Whose is that with the vase on top?"

"Vase?" said Preston--"it's an urn. It is an urn, Daisy. People do not
put vases on tombstones."

I asked what the difference was.

"The difference? O Daisy, Daisy! Why vases are to put flowers in; and
urns--I'll tell you, Daisy,--I believe it is because the Romans used
to burn the bodies of their friends and gather up the ashes and keep
them in a funeral urn. So an urn comes to be appropriate to a
tombstone."

"I do not see how," I said.

"Why because an urn comes to be an emblem of mortality and all that.
Come, Daisy; let us go."

"I think a vase of flowers would be a great deal nicer," I said. "We
do not keep the ashes of our friends."

"We don't put signs of joy over their graves either," said Preston.