“I fear you think me very foolish?”

“Why should I think you foolish?”

“Because I have come here at night to stand before a half-forgotten grave.”

“I do not think you foolish, indeed.  I was only wondering what was passing in your mind.”

Angela hung her head and made no answer, and the clock above them boomed out the hour, raising its sullen note in insolent defiance of the silence.  What is it that is so solemn about the striking of the belfry-clock when one stands in a churchyard at night?  Is it that the hour softens our natures, and makes them more amenable to semi-superstitious influences?  Or is it that the thousand evidences of departed mortality which surround us, appealing with dumb force to natural fears, throw open for a space the gates of our world-sealed imagination, to tenant its vast halls with prophetic echoes of our end?  Perhaps it is useless to inquire.  The result remains the same:  few of us can hear those tones at night without a qualm, and, did we put our thoughts into words, they would run something thus: 

“That sound once broke upon the living ears of those who sleep around us.  We hear it now.  In a little while, hour after hour, it will echo against the tombstones of our graves, and new generations, coming out of the silent future, will stand where we stand, and hearken; and muse, as we mused, over the old problems that we have gone to solve; whilst we—­shall we not be deaf to hear and dumb to utter?”

Such, at any rate, were the unspoken thoughts that crept into the hearts of Arthur and Angela as the full sound from the belfry thinned itself away into silence.  She grew a little pale, and glanced at him, and he gave an involuntary shiver, while even the dog Aleck sniffed and whined uncomfortably.

“It feels cold,” he said.  “Shall we go?”

They turned and walked towards the gate, and, by the time they reached it, all superstitious thoughts had vanished—­at any rate, from Arthur’s mind, for he recollected that he had set himself a task to do, and that now would be the time to do it.  Absorbed in this reflection, he forgot his politeness, and passed first through the turnstile.  On the further side he paused, and looked earnestly into his beloved’s face.  Their eyes met, and there was that in his that caused her to swiftly drop her own.  A silence ensued as they stood by the gate.  He broke it.

“It is a lovely night.  Let us walk through the ruins.”

“I shall wet my feet:  the dew must be falling.”

“There is no dew falling to-night.  Won’t you come?”

“Let us go to-morrow; it is later than I generally go in.  Pigott will wonder what has become of me.”

“Never mind Pigott.  The night is too fine to waste asleep; besides, you know, one should always look at ruins by moonlight.  Please come.”

She looked at him doubtfully, hesitated, and came.

“What do you want to see?” she said presently, with as near an approach to irritation as he had ever heard her indulge in.  “That is the famous window that Mr. Fraser always goes into raptures about.”