His companion leant his hand on the old stooping tombstone. 'Well, you
know, there's a good deal there'--he stooped over--'if you read between
the lines. Even if you don't.'

'A suicide,' said Lawford, under his breath.

'Yes, a suicide; that's why our Christian countrymen have buried him
outside of the fold. Dead or alive, they try to keep the wolf out.'

'Is this, then, unconsecrated ground?' said Lawford.

'Haven't you noticed,' drawled the other, 'how green the grass grows
down here, and how very sharp are poor old Sabathier's thorns? Besides,
he was a stranger, and they--kept him out.'

'But, surely,' said Lawford, 'was it so entirely a matter of choice--the
laws of the Church? If he did kill himself, he did.'

The stranger turned with a little shrug. 'I don't suppose it's a matter
of much consequence to HIM. I fancied I was his only friend. May I
venture to ask why you are interested in the poor old thing?'

Lawford's mind was as calm and shallow as a millpond. 'Oh, a rather
unusual thing happened to me here,' he said. 'You say you often come?'

'Often,' said the stranger rather curtly.

'Has anything--ever--occurred?'

'"Occurred?"' He raised his eyebrows. 'I wish it had. I come here
simply, as I have said, because it's quiet; because I prefer the company
of those who never answer me back, and who do not so much as condescend
to pay me the least attention.' He smiled and turned his face towards
the quiet fields.

Lawford, after a long pause, lifted his eyes. 'Do you think,' he said
softly, 'it is possible one ever could?'

'"One ever could?"'

'Answer back?'

There was a low rotting wall of stone encompassing Sabathier's grave;
on this the stranger sat down. He glanced up rather curiously at his
companion. 'Seldom the time and the place and the revenant altogether.
The thought has occurred to others,' he ventured to add.

'Of course, of course,' said Lawford eagerly. 'But it is an absolutely
new one to me. I don't mean that I have never had such an idea, just in
one's own superficial way; but'--he paused and glanced swiftly into the
fast-thickening twilight--'I wonder: are they, do you think, really, all
quite dead?'

'Call and see!' taunted the stranger softly.

'Ah, yes, I know,' said Lawford. 'But I believe in the resurrection of
the body; that is what we say; and supposing, when a man dies--supposing
it was most frightfully against one's will; that one hated the awful
inaction that de