Ronald away from the
swift clang and throbbing hum of the bells and in the direction of the
old cemetery. Passing through the clumsy tower-gate that lifts its
grimy bulk sullenly, like a huge head-stone over the grave of a dead
time of feudalism, he reached the burial-ground and entered the quiet
enclosure. The usual touching reverence of the Germans for their dead
was strikingly manifest around him. The humbler mounds, walled up with
rough stones a foot or two above the pathway level, carried on their
crests little gardens of gay and inexpensive plants; while on the tall
wooden crosses at their head hung yellow wreaths, half hiding the
hopeful legend, "Wiedersehen." The more pretentious slabs bore vases
filled with fresh flowers; while in the grate-barred vaults, that
skirted the ground like the arches of a cloister, lay rusty heaps of
long-since mouldered bloom, topped by newer wreaths tossed lovingly in
to wilt and turn to dust in their turn, like those cast in before them
in memory of that other dust asleep below.

Turning aside from the central walk that halved the cemetery, Ronald
strolled along, his hands in his pockets, his eyes listlessly fixed on
the orange-colored fumes and rolling smoke that welled out of tall
chimneys in the hollow beyond, an idle student-tune humming on his
lips, and his thoughts nowhere, and everywhere, at once. Happening to
look away from the dun smoke-trail for an instant, he found something
of greater interest close at hand. An old man stooped stiffly over a
simple mound, busied among the flowers that hid it, and by his side
crouched a young girl, perhaps fourteen years old, who peered up at
Ronald with questioning, velvet-brown eyes. The old man heard the
intruder's steps crunching in the damp gravel, and slowly looked up
too.

"Good morning, mein Herr," said Ronald, pleasantly.

The old man remained for an instant blinking nervously, and shading
his eyes from the full sunlight that fell on his face. A quiet face it
was, and very old, seamed and creased by mazy wrinkles that played at
aimless cross-purposes with each other, beginning and ending nowhere.
His thick beard and thin, curved nose looked just a little Jewish, and
seemed at variance with his pale blue eyes that were still bright in
spite of age. And yet, bearded as he was, there was a lurking
expression about his features that bordered upon effeminacy, and made
the treble of his voice sound even more thin and womanish as