leasing terror because of the
overhanging graves, stood regardless of the sun. The crows, sated with
the gleanings of harvest fields, fluttered in their rookeries with
scarcely a caw. It seemed as if no sound of discord or strife could
ever break in that enchanted hollow.

***

As I turned away to retrace my steps through the gate I came on a woman
sitting on the mort-safe, a handkerchief moist with her tears in her
hand. She had come up from the quarries and she had visited her dead.
And she came because yesterday she received word that on the
battlefield of Marne her son was killed. He was her eldest. The
others were not old enough yet to fight. Her husband was killed in an
accident, and she had reared her children, refusing all help from the
parish. The pride of the blood sustained her. And now that her son
was dead she came hither, driven by an irresistible instinct to visit
her husband's grave. It was as if she wanted to tell him about John,
and how he died a hero, trying to carry a wounded comrade through the
hail of the shrapnel.

She was weary, and from her husband's grave she turned to the church.
She would go and sit in the corner under the gallery, where John used
to sit. He had sat with her there at his first Communion. The
memories wrapped her round, and she would feel her son near her there.
But the door of the church was locked and barred. With an added ache
in her heart she turned away, and weariness compelled her to sit on the
iron mort-safe, which the parish provided in a former century to
protect their dead from sacrilegious hands. "But the church used to be
open," I said. "Aye," she replied tremulously, gathering up her
handkerchief into a round ball; "but some did-na like it; the boots on
the week-days are na sae clean, and they dirtied the kirk. That must
be why they lockit the door." It was not that she complained. Those
who locked the church were wise men, and no doubt they knew best. So
she sat on the mort-safe.

"I have other sons, and when they are older they will go, too," she
said. "I'll no' keep them back. And if they die it'll be for God's
great cause." Her lips quivered as she spoke. The moist ball in the
right hand was clenched tight--there were no more tears to shed.

And as I looked at the worn, lined face, the bent shoulders, the faded
rusty black mantle with its fringe, and the sunken lips that quivered
now and then, there came a sudden realisation. I saw