.

Twenty years passed away. Again, he was seated beneath the old yew tree
in the church-yard.

It was summer now; bright, beautiful summer, with the birds singing, and
the flowers covering the ground, and scenting the air with their
perfume.

But he was not alone now, nor did the little girl steal near on tiptoe,
fearful of being heard. She was seated by his side, and his arm was
round her, and she looked up into his face, and smiled as she whispered:
"The first evening of our lives we were ever together was passed here:
we will spend the first evening of our wedded life in the same quiet,
happy place." And he drew her closer to him as she spoke.

The summer is gone; and the autumn; and twenty more summers and autumns
have passed away since that evening, in the old church-yard.

A young man, on a bright moonlight night, comes reeling through the
little white gate, and stumbling over the graves. He shouts and he
sings, and is presently followed by others like unto himself, or worse.
So, they all laugh at the dark solemn head of the yew tree, and throw
stones up at the place where the moon has silvered the boughs.

Those same boughs are again silvered by the moon, and they droop over
his mother's grave. There is a little stone which bears this
inscription:

"HER HEART BRAKE IN SILENCE."

But the silence of the church-yard is now broken by a voice--not of the
youth--nor a voice of laughter and ribaldry.

"My son! dost thou see this grave? and dost thou read the record in
anguish, whereof may come repentance?"

"Of what should I repent?" answers the son; "and why should my young
ambition for fame relax in its strength because my mother was old and
weak?"

"Is this indeed our son?" says the father, bending in agony over the
grave of his beloved.

"I can well believe I am not;" exclaimeth the youth. "It is well that
you have brought me here to say so. Our natures are unlike; our courses
must be opposite. Your way lieth here--mine yonder!"

So the son left the father kneeling by the grave.

Again a few years are passed. It is winter, with a roaring wind and a
thick gray fog. The graves in the church-yard are covered with snow, and
there are great icicles in the church-porch. The wind now carries a
swathe of snow along the tops of the graves, as though the "sheeted
dead" were at some melancholy play; and hark! the icicles fall with a
crash and jingle, like a solemn mockery of the echo of the unseemly
mirth