"My God, sirs!" he exclaimed, springing up with the energy of youth when he had heard the recital a second time, "tell me _who_ started this story! Tell me _how_ and _where_ it began!" "We cannot. We have heard many tell it, and not all alike." "And do they--do you--believe--it is--true?" he asked helplessly. "We all _know_ it is true; do not _you_ believe it?" "I can never forget it!" he said, in tones quickly grown harsh and husky. "Let us go away from so pitiful a place." It was near nightfall when he returned, unobserved, and sat down beside the monument as one who had ended a pilgrimage. "They all tell me the same story," he murmured wearily. "Ah, it was the hidden epitaph that wrought the error! But for it, the sun of her memory would have had its brief, befitting day and tender setting. Presumptuous folly, to suppose they would understand my masterpiece, when they so often misconceive the hidden heart of His beautiful works, and convert uncomprehended good and true into a curse of evil!" The night fell. He was awaiting it. Nearer and nearer rolled the dark, suffering heart of a storm; nearer towards the calm, white breasts of the dead. Over the billowy graves the many-footed winds suddenly fled away in a wild, tumultuous cohort. Overhead, great black bulks swung heavily at one another across the tremulous stars. Of all earthly spots, where does the awful discord of the elements seem so futile and theatric as in a vast cemetery? Blow, then, winds, till you uproot the trees! Pour, floods, pour, till the water trickles down into the face of the pale sleeper below! Rumble and flash, ye clouds, till the earth trembles and seems to be aflame! But not a lock of hair, so carefully put back over the brows, is tossed or disordered. The sleeper has not stretched forth an arm and drawn the shroud closer about his face, to keep out the wet. Not an ear has heard the riving thunderbolt, nor so much as an eyelid trembled on the still eyes for all the lightning's fury. But had there been another human presence on the midnight scene, some lightning flash would have revealed the old man, a grand, a terrible figure, in sympathy with its wild, sad violence. He stood beside his masterpiece, towering to his utmost height in a posture of all but superhuman majesty and strength. His long white hair and longer white beard streamed outward on the roaring winds. His arms, bared to the shoulder, swung aloft a ponderous hammer. His face, ashen-grey as the marble before him, was set with an expression of stern despair. Then, as the thunder crashed, his hammer fell on the monument. Bolt after bolt, blow after blow. Once more he might have been seen kneeling beside the ruin, his eyes strained close to its heart, awaiting another flash to tell him that the inviolable epitaph had shared in the destruction. For days following many curious eyes came to peer into the opened heart of the shattered structure, but in vain.