Gaining the bank, I saw, first, that the white object was but one of many, disposed behind it in two rows as regular as the tree-stems allowed; next, that these objects were wooden boards, pained white.  And with that, as I stepped towards the foremost, my foot slipped and I fell, twisting my ankle and narrowly saving myself from an ugly sprain.  I had stumbled in a hollow, shallow depression between the mounds.  Picking myself up, I saw that to left and right and all around me the turf was ridged with similar mounds, the whole enclosure full of them.  In a flash I read the meaning of the white-painted boards.  Yes—­and there was writing on them, too—­no words, but single letters and dates, roughly painted in black—­ “O.  M., 1796”—­“R.  A. S., 1796”—­“P d.  V. and A. M. d.  V., 1800”—­ these, and perhaps two score of others.  The shape of the mounds interpreted these inscriptions.

I was in a graveyard.

I sat helpless for a minute, dreadfully scanning the gloom through which the massed palmetto-tops admitted but a shaft of light here and there.  The flies, which had been a nuisance across the stream, here swarmed in myriads so thick that they seemed to hang in clusters from the boughs; and their incessant buzzing added to the horror of the place a hint of something foul, sinister, almost obscene.

I had a mind to creep away on all-fours, but suddenly forgot my ankle and sprang erect, on the defensive, at the sound of voices.  A grassy path led through the enclosure, between the graves, and at the end of it appeared two figures.

They were two women; the first a negress, short, squat, and ugly, wearing a frock of the gaudiest yellow, and for head-dress a scarlet handkerchief, bound closely about her scalp and tied in front with an immense bow; the other—­but how shall I describe the other?

She was white, and she wore a dress of fresh white muslin; a short dress, tied about the waist with a pale-blue sash, and above the shoulders with narrow ribbons of the same colour.  Her figure was that of a girl; her ringlets hung loose like a girl’s.  She walked with a girlish step; and until she came close I took her for a girl of sixteen or seventeen.

Then, with a shock, I found myself staring into the face, which might well belong to a woman between sixty and seventy, so faded it was and reticulated with wrinkles; and into a pair of eyes that wavered between ingenuousness and a childish cunning; and from them down to her slim ankles and a pair of dancing-shoes, so fairy-like and diminutive that they seemed scarcely to press the grass underfoot.

The pair had drawn to a halt, while I stood uncertain whether to brave them or make a bid for escape.  I heard the negress cry aloud in a foreign tongue, at the same time flinging up her hands; but the other pushed past her and walked straight down upon me, albeit with a mincing, tripping motion, as if she was pacing a dance.