ced. 'It's astonishingly quiet
and beautiful,' he said.

The stranger turned his head to glance over the fields. 'Yes, it is,
very,' he replied. There was the faintest accent, a little drawl of
unfriendliness in the remark.

'You often sit here?' Lawford persisted.

The stranger raised his eyebrows. 'Oh yes, often.' He smiled. 'It is
my own modest fashion of attending divine service. The congregation is
rapt.'

'My visits,' said Lawford, 'have been very few--in fact, so far as I
know, I have only once been here before.'

'I envy you the novelty.' There was again the same faint unmistakable
antagonism in voice and attitude; and yet so deep was the relief in
talking to a fellow creature who hadn't the least suspicion of anything
unusual in his appearance that Lawford was extremely disinclined to turn
back. He made another effort--for conversation with strangers had always
been a difficulty to him--and advanced towards the seat. 'You mustn't
please let me intrude upon you,' he said, 'but really I am very
interested in this queer old place. Perhaps you would tell me something
of its history?' He sat down. His companion moved slowly to the other
side of the broken gravestone.

'To tell you the truth,' he replied, picking his way as it were from
word to word, 'it's "history," as people call it, does not interest me
in the least. After all, it's not when a thing is, but what it is, that
much matters. What this is'--he glanced, with head bent, across the
shadowy stones, 'is pretty evident. Of course, age has its charms.'

'And is this very old?'

'Oh yes, it's old right enough, as things go; but even age, perhaps,
is mainly an affair of the imagination. There's a tombstone near that
little old hawthorn, and there are two others side by side under the
wall, still even legibly late seventeenth century. That's pretty
good weathering.' He smiled faintly. 'Of course, the church itself is
centuries older, drenched with age. But she's still sleep-walking while
these old tombstones dream. Glow-worms and crickets are not such bad
bedfellows.'

'What interested me most, I think,' said Lawford haltingly, 'was this.'
He pointed with his stick to the grave at his feet.

'Ah, yes, Sabathier's,' said the stranger; 'I know his peculiar history
almost by heart.'

Lawford found himself staring with unusual concentration into the
rather long and pale face. 'Not, I suppose,' he resumed faintly--'not, I
suppose, beyond what's there.'