“Knowing by heart!” he broke in with new merriment. I kept on. “Why not? They tell those things everywhere--where they’re so lucky as to possess them! It’s a flawless specimen.” “Of 1840 repartee?” He spoke with increasing pauses. “Yes. We do at least possess that. And some wine of about the same date--and even considerably older.” “All the better for age,” I exclaimed. But the blue eyes of Mayrant were far away and full of shadow. “Poor Kings Port,” he said very slowly and quietly. Then he looked at me with the steady look and the smile that one sometimes has when giving voice to a sorrowful conviction against which one has tried to struggle. “Poor Kings Port,” he affectionately repeated. His hand tapped lightly two or three times upon the gravestone upon which he was seated. “Be honest and say that you think so, too,” he demanded, always with his smile. But how was I to agree aloud with what his silent hand had expressed? Those inaudible taps on the stone spoke clearly enough; they said: “Here lies Kings Port, here lives Kings Port. Outside of this is our true death, on the vacant wharves, in the empty streets. All that we have left is the immortality which these historic names have won.” How could I tell him that I thought so, too? Nor was I as sure of it then as he was. And besides, this was a young man whose spirit was almost surely, in suffering; ill fortune both material and of the heart, I seemed to suspect, had made him wounded and bitter in these immediate days; and the very suppression he was exercising hurt him the more deeply. So I replied, honestly, as he had asked: “I hope you are mistaken.” “That’s because you haven’t been here long enough,” he declared. Over us, gently, from somewhere across the gardens and the walls, came a noiseless water breeze, to which the roses moved and nodded among the tombs. They gave him a fanciful thought. “Look at them! They belong to us, and they know it. They’re saying, ‘Yes; yes; yes,’ all day long. I don’t know why on earth I’m talking in this way to you!” he broke off with vivacity. “But you made me laugh so.” VI: In the Churchyard “Then it was a good laugh, indeed!” I cried heartily.