Cradock wondered for some little time what could be the meaning of it. Then he knew that it was Claytonʼs offering to the beloved Amy. No doubt could remain any longer, when he saw in the hollow of the back the proposed inscription pencilled, “Rosa debita”, for the dead gold of the ladyʼs palm, “Rosa dedita” for the burnished gold of the cavalierʼs high pressure. With ingenious love to help him, he made it out in a moment. “A rose due, now a rose true”. That was what it came to, if you took it in punster fashion. Just one of poor Vileyʼs conceits. Cradock had no time to follow it out, for Miss Eudoxia then came in with a parcel as big as a feather–bed, of comforters, wrappers, and eatables. But, after he had left the house, he began to think about it, in the little path across the green to the village churchyard. He concluded that Amy must have been in the wood that fatal evening. She must have come to meet Clayton there; and yet it was not like her. Facts, however, are facts, as sure as eggs are eggs; though our knowledge makes no great advance through either of those aphorisms. But a growing sense of injury—though he had no right to feel injured, however it might be—this sense had kept him from asking for Amy, or leaving the flirt a good–bye. He entered the quiet churchyard, with the moon rising over the tombstones, a mass of shadow cast by the great tower, and some epitaphs pushing well into the light, like the names which get poked into history. The wavering glance of the diffident moon, uncertain yet what the clouds meant, slipped along the buttressed walls, and tried to hold on at the angles. The damp corner, where the tower stood forth, and the south porch ran out to look at it, drew back like a ghost who was curtseying, and declining all further inquiry. Green slime was about, like the sludge of a river; and a hundred sacred memories, growing weary and rheumatic, had stopped their ears with lichen. Cradock came in at the rickety swing–stile, and, caring no shadow for ghost or ghostess, although he had run away so, took the straight course to the old black doorway, and on to the heart of the churchyard; for he must say good–bye to Clayton. All Nowelhurst still admired that path; but those who had paved and admired it first were sleeping on either side of it. The pavement now was overlapped, undertucked, and crannied, full of holes where lobworms lived and came out after a thunderstorm, and three–cornered dips that looked glazed in wet weather, but scurfy and clammy in drought. And some of the flags stole away and gave under, as if they too wanted burial, while others jerked up, and asserted themselves as superior to some of the tombstones. There in the dark, no mortal with any respect for his grandfather, nor even a ghost with unbevilled soles, could go many steps without tripping.