“That has been a standing item for years in all the Florida
guide-books,” said John, “systematically repeated in the latest
editions. They will give up a good deal, but that cherished Huguenot
cemetery they must and will retain. The Huguenots, poor fellows, as Miss
St. John says, never had a cemetery here, and it is only within
comparatively modern times that there has been any Protestant cemetery
whatever. Formerly the bodies of all persons not Romanists were sent
across to the island for sepulture.”
The Shell Road having come to an end, we walked on in the moonlight, now
on little grass patches, now in the deep sand, passing a ruined stone
wall, all that was left of a pleasant home, destroyed, like many other
outlying residences, during the war. The myrtle thickets along the
road-side were covered with the clambering curling sprays of the yellow
jasmine, the lovely wild flower that brings the spring to Florida. We
stopped to gather the wreaths of golden blossoms, and decked ourselves
with them, Southern fashion. Every one wears the jasmine. When it first
appears every one says, “Have you seen it? It has come!” And out they go
to gather it, and bring it home in triumph.
Passing through the odd little wicket, which, with the old-fashioned
turnstile, is used in Florida instead of a latched gate, we found
ourselves in a green lane bordered at the far end with cedars. Here,
down on the North River, was the Rose Garden, now standing with its
silent house fast asleep in the moonlight.
“I do not see Iris,” said Aunt Diana, anxiously.
“There is somebody over on the other side of the hedge,” said Sara.
We looked, and beheld two figures bending down and apparently scratching
in the earth with sticks.
“What in the world are they doing?” said Aunt Diana. “They can not be
sowing seed in the middle of the night, can they?”
“They look like two ghouls,” said Sara, “and one of them has--yes, I am
sure one of them has a bone.”
“It is Miss Sharp and the Professor,” said John.
It was. We streamed over in a body and confronted them. “So
interesting!” began Miss Sharp, in explanatory haste. “At various times
the fragments of no less than eight skeletons have been discovered here,
it seems, and we have been so fortunate as to secure a relic, a valuable
Huguenot relic;” and with pride she displayed her bone.
“Of course,” said Sara, “a massacre! What did I tell you, Martha, about
their arising from the past and glaring at me?”
“Miss Sharp,” began Aunt Diana, grimly, “where is Iris?”
“Oh, she is right here, the dear child. Iris! Iris!”
But no Iris appeared.
“I assure you she has not left my side until--until now,” said the
negligent shepherdess, peering about the shadowy garden. “Iris! Iris!”
“And pray, Miss Sharp, how long may be your ‘now?’” demanded Aunt Diana,
with cutting emphasis.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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