Esmond came to this spot in one sunny evening of spring, and saw, amidst a thousand black crosses, casting their shadows across the grassy mounds, that particular one which marked his mother’s resting-place.  Many more of those poor creatures that lay there had adopted that same name, with which sorrow had rebaptized her, and which fondly seemed to hint their individual story of love and grief.  He fancied her in tears and darkness, kneeling at the foot of her cross, under which her cares were buried.  Surely he knelt down, and said his own prayer there, not in sorrow so much as in awe (for even his memory had no recollection of her), and in pity for the pangs which the gentle soul in life had been made to suffer.  To this cross she brought them; for this heavenly bridegroom she exchanged the husband who had wooed her, the traitor who had left her.  A thousand such hillocks lay round about, the gentle daisies springing out of the grass over them, and each bearing its cross and requiescat.  A nun, veiled in black, was kneeling hard by, at a sleeping sister’s bedside (so fresh made, that the spring had scarce had time to spin a coverlid for it); beyond the cemetery walls you had glimpses of life and the world, and the spires and gables of the city.  A bird came down from a roof opposite, and lit first on a cross, and then on the grass below it, whence it flew away presently with a leaf in its mouth:  then came a sound as of chanting, from the chapel of the sisters hard by; others had long since filled the place which poor Mary Magdeleine once had there, were kneeling at the same stall, and hearing the same hymns and prayers in which her stricken heart had found consolation.  Might she sleep in peace—­might she sleep in peace; and we, too, when our struggles and pains are over!  But the earth is the Lord’s as the heaven is; we are alike his creatures here and yonder.  I took a little flower off the hillock and kissed it, and went my way, like the bird that had just lighted on the cross by me, back into the world again.  Silent receptacle of death; tranquil depth of calm, out of reach of tempest and trouble!  I felt as one who had been walking below the sea, and treading amidst the bones of shipwrecks.

CHAPTER XIV.

The campaign of 1707, 1708.

During the whole of the year which succeeded that in which the glorious battle of Ramillies had been fought, our army made no movement of importance, much to the disgust of very many of our officers remaining inactive in Flanders, who said that his Grace the Captain-General had had fighting enough, and was all for money now, and the enjoyment of his five thousand a year and his splendid palace at Woodstock, which was now being built.  And his Grace had sufficient occupation fighting his enemies at home this year, where it began to be whispered that his favor was decreasing, and his duchess losing her hold on the Queen, who was