This state of mind could not last long--and I returned, with languid feelings to my Inn. I ordered my dinner--green peas and a sweetbread--it had been a favorite dish with me in my childhood--I was allowed to have it on my birth days. I was impatient to see it come upon table--but, when it came, I could scarce eat a mouthful--my tears choaked me. I called for wine--I drank a pint and a half of red wine--and not till then had I dared to visit the church-yard, where my parents were interred. The _cottage_ lay in my way--Margaret had chosen it for that very reason, to be near the church--for the old lady was regular in her attendance on public worship--I passed on--and in a moment found myself among the tombs. I had been present at my father's burial, and knew the spot again--my mother's funeral I was prevented by illness from attending--a plain stone was placed over the grave, with their initials carved upon it--for they both occupied one grave. I prostrated myself before the spot--I kissed the earth that covered them--I contemplated, with gloomy delight, the time when I should mingle my dust with their's--and kneeled, with my arms incumbent on the grave-stone, in a kind of mental prayer--for I could not speak. Having performed these duties, I arose with quieter feelings, and felt leisure to attend to indifferent objects.--Still I continued in the church-yard, reading the various inscriptions, and moralizing on them with that kind of levity, which will not unfrequently spring up in the mind, in the midst of deep melancholy. I read of nothing but careful parents, loving husbands, and dutiful children. I said jestingly, where be all the _bad_ people buried? Bad parents, bad husbands, bad children--what cemeteries are appointed for these? do they not sleep in consecrated ground? or is it but a pious fiction, a generous oversight, in the survivors, which thus tricks out men's epitaphs when dead, who, in their life-time, discharged the offices of life, perhaps, but lamely?--Their failings, with their reproaches, now sleep with them in the grave. _Man wars not with the dead._ It is a _trait_ of human nature, for which I love it. I had not observed, till now, a little group assembled at the other end of the church-yard; it was a company of children, who were gathered round a young man, dressed in black, sitting on a grave-stone. He seemed to be asking them questions--probably, about their learning--and one little dirty ragged-headed fellow was clambering up his knees to kiss him.--The children had been eating black cherries--for some of the stones were scattered about, and their mouths were smeared with them. As I drew near them, I thought I discerned in the stranger a mild benignity of countenance, which I had somewhere seen before--I gazed at him more attentively-- It was Allan Clare! sitting on the grave of his sister.