I prostrated myself before the spot—­I kissed the earth that covered them—­I contemplated, with gloomy delight, the time when I should mingle my dust with theirs—­and kneeled, with my arms incumbent on the gravestone, in a kind of mental prayer—­for I could not speak.

Having performed these duties, I arose with quieter feelings, and felt leisure to attend to indifferent objects.—­Still I continued in the church-yard, reading the various inscriptions, and moralizing on them with that kind of levity, which will not unfrequently spring up in the mind, in the midst of deep melancholy.

I read of nothing but careful parents, loving husbands, and dutiful children.  I said jestingly, where be all the bad people buried?  Bad parents, bad husbands, bad children—­what cemeteries are appointed for these?—­do they not sleep in consecrated ground? or is it but a pious fiction, a generous oversight, in the survivors, which thus tricks out men’s epitaphs when dead, who, in their lifetime, discharged the offices of life, perhaps, but lamely?  Their failings, with their reproaches, now sleep with them in the grave. Man wars not with the dead. It is a trait of human nature, for which I love it.

I had not observed, till now, a little group assembled at the other end of the church-yard; it was a company of children, who were gathered round a young man, dressed in black, sitting on a gravestone.

He seemed to be asking them questions—­probably, about their learning—­and one little dirty ragged-headed fellow was clambering up his knees to kiss him.  The children had been eating black cherries—­for some of the stones were scattered about, and their mouths were smeared with them.

As I drew near them, I thought I discerned in the stranger a mild benignity of countenance, which I had somewhere seen before—­I gazed at him more attentively.

It was Allan Clare! sitting on the grave of his sister.

I threw my arms about his neck.  I exclaimed “Allan”—­he turned his eyes upon me—­he knew me—­we both wept aloud—­it seemed as though the interval since we parted had been as nothing—­I cried out, “Come, and tell me about these things.”

I drew him away from his little friends—­he parted with a show of reluctance from the church-yard—­Margaret and her grand-daughter lay buried there, as well as his sister—­I took him to my inn—­secured a room, where we might be private—­ordered fresh wine—­scarce knowing what I did, I danced for joy.

Allan was quite overcome, and taking me by the hand, he said, “This repays me for all.”

It was a proud day for me—­I had found the friend I thought dead—­earth seemed to me no longer valuable, than as it contained him; and existence a blessing no longer than while I should live to be his comforter.

I began, at leisure, to survey him with more attention.  Time and grief had left few traces of that fine enthusiasm, which once burned in his countenance—­his eyes had lost their original fire, but they retained an uncommon sweetness, and whenever they were turned upon me, their smile pierced to my heart.