‘You don’t find it enlivening, do you--eh?’ said my companion. ‘I never saw such a frightfully desolate spot,’ I said, ‘to have yet the appearance of a place of Christian worship. It looks as if there were a curse upon it. Are all those the graves of suicides and murderers? It cannot surely be consecrated ground?’ ‘It’s not nice,’ he said. ‘I didn’t expect you to like it. I only said it was odd.’ ‘Is there any service held in it?’ I asked. ‘Yes--once a fortnight or so. The rector has another living a few miles off.’ ‘Where can the congregation come from?’ ‘Hardly from anywhere. There ain’t generally more than five or six, I believe. Let’s have a look at the inside of it.’ ‘The windows are much too high, and no foothold.’ ‘We’ll go in.’ ‘Where can you get the key? It must be a mile off at least, by your own account. There’s no house nearer than that, you say.’ He made me no reply, but going to the only flat gravestone, which stood on short thick pillars, he put his hand beneath it, and drew out a great rusty key. ‘Country lawyers know a secret or two,’ he said. ‘Not always much worth knowing,’ I rejoined,--‘if the inside be no better than the outside.’ ‘We’ll have a look, anyhow,’ he said, as he turned the key in the dry lock. The door snarled on its hinges, and disclosed a space drearier certainly, and if possible uglier, than its promise. ‘Really, Mr Coningham,’ I said, ‘I don’t see why you should have brought me to look at this place.’ ‘It answered for a bait, at all events. You’ve had a good long ride, which was the best thing for you. Look what a wretched little vestry that is!’ It was but a corner of the east end, divided off by a faded red curtain. ‘I suppose they keep a parish register here,’ he said. ‘Let us have a look.’ Behind the curtain hung a dirty surplice and a gown. In the corner stood a desk like the schoolmaster’s in a village school. There was a shelf with a few vellum-bound books on it, and nothing else, not even a chair in the place. ‘Yes; there they are!’ he said, as he took down one of the volumes from the shelf. ‘This one comes to a close in the middle of the last century. I dare say there is something in this, now, that would be interesting enough to somebody. Who knows how many properties it might make change hands?’ ‘Not many, I should think. Those matters are pretty well seen to now.’ [Illustration: “COUNTRY LAWYERS KNOW A SECRET OR TWO,” HE SAID.] ‘By some one or other--not always the rightful heirs. Life is full of the strangest facts, Mr Cumbermede. If I were a novelist, now, like you, my experience would make me dare a good deal more in the way of invention than any novelist I happen to have read. Look there, for instance.’ He pointed to the top of the last page, or rather the last half of the cover. I read as follows: ‘MARRIAGES, 1748.