silence of a week-day afternoon, when the stillness around makes the solitary footfall echo, and those who come to pray can bend the knee and clasp the hand, without exciting the inquisitive gaze of a less piously disposed neighbour. Hamilton had gone in search of the person who had the keys of the Maximus chapel. On his return he found Hildegarde standing thoughtfully opposite a newly-made tomb, on which a placard was placed, with the words:—“This tomb is to be sold.” “I should like extremely to know your thoughts,” he said, quietly placing himself beside her. “Should you? They would scarcely repay you for the trouble of listening.” “I am quite willing to make the trial.” “But I am much too lazy to attempt collecting all the scattered thoughts of the last ten minutes.” “The very last I can guess, perhaps,” said Hamilton; “your eyes were fixed on that placard, and you thought——” “Well, what?” “Where are now the future occupiers of that tomb? Am I not right?” “Quite right. Wherever they are, and whoever they may be, they certainly have no wish to enter here. The buyers of _tombs_ are seldom disposed to enter into actual possession. But where is this Maximus chapel? You said it was in the mountain, and I see nothing in the least like an entrance, although there are three windows and a wall up there.” “The windows were formerly mere holes made in the rock, and ought never to have been glazed. Through the largest of them fifty monks, who had taken refuge with Maximus, were thrown headlong down the mountain by the barbarians who took possession of Salzburg in the fifth century.” “And Maximus?” “He was hung.” “That was a pity—I dare say he would have preferred being thrown over the precipice.” “Do you think so? As it all came to the same in the end, I should imagine it must rather have been a matter of indifference to him.” “But I do not,” cried Hildegarde, stopping suddenly. “I think the manner in which one is put to death of great importance; I am sure you would prefer being beheaded to being hung.” “The choice would be distressing; but I believe you are right; I should certainly choose being beheaded, as the more gentlemanlike death of the two, though I remember reading in some book of the horrible hypothesis—that the eye could see, the ear hear, and the brain think, for some moments after the head had been severed from the body.”