“The dead are the past; and with the past rests all in the present or the future that can take us out of our natural selves. The past decides our present. By the past we divine our future. History, poetry, science, the welfare of states, the advancement of individuals, are all connected with tombstones of which inscriptions are effaced. You are right to honour the mouldered tombstones with fresh flowers. It is only in the companionship of the dead that one ceases to be an egotist.” If the imperfectly educated Lily had been above the quick comprehension of the academical Kenelm in her speech, so Kenelm was now above the comprehension of Lily. She, too, paused before she replied,-- “If I knew you better, I think I could understand you better. I wish you knew Lion. I should like to hear you talk with him.” While thus conversing, they had left the burial-ground, and were in the pathway trodden by the common wayfarer. Lily resumed,--“Yes, I should like to hear you talk with Lion.” “You mean your guardian, Mr. Melville?” “Yes, you know that.” “And why should you like to hear me talk to him?” “Because there are some things in which I doubt if he was altogether right, and I would ask you to express my doubts to him; you would, would you not?” “But why can you not express them yourself to your guardian; are you afraid of him?” “Afraid, no indeed! But--ah, how many people there are coming this way! There is some tiresome public meeting in the town to-day. Let us take the ferry: the other side of the stream is much pleasanter; we shall have it more to ourselves.” Turning aside to the right while she thus spoke, Lily descended a gradual slope to the margin of the stream, on which they found an old man dozily reclined in his ferry-boat. As, seated side by side, they were slowly borne over the still waters under a sunless sky, Kenelm would have renewed the subject which his companion had begun, but she shook her head, with a significant glance at the ferryman. Evidently what she had to say was too confidential to admit of a listener, not that the old ferryman seemed likely to take the trouble of listening to any talk that was not addressed to him. Lily soon did address her talk to him, “So, Brown, the cow has quite recovered.” “Yes, Miss, thanks to you, and God bless you. To think of your beating the old witch like that!” “‘Tis not I who beat the witch, Brown; ‘tis the fairy. Fairies, you know, are much more powerful than witches.” “So I find, Miss.” Lily here turned to Kenelm; “Mr. Brown has a very nice milch-cow that was suddenly taken very ill, and both he and his wife were convinced that the cow was bewitched.” “Of course it were, that stands to reason. Did not Mother Wright tell my old woman that she would repent of selling milk, and abuse her dreadful; and was not the cow taken with shivers that very night?” “Gently, Brown. Mother Wright did not say that your wife would repent of selling milk, but of putting water into it.”