Seven Ashes, with its cross-roads, formed indeed the extreme northern angle of the high winding ridge which terminated at Wild Pine. Approached from the road leading to this latter spot,--a road darkened on either hand by wind-swept Scotch-firs--it was the sort of place where, in less civilized times, one might have expected to encounter a threatening highwayman, or at least to have stumbled upon some sinister witch-figure stooping over an unholy task or groping among the weeds. Even in modern times and in bright sunshine the spot was not one where a traveller was induced to linger upon his way or to rest himself. When overcast, as it was at the moment of Andersen’s approach, by the coming on of twilight, it was a place from which a normal-minded person would naturally be in haste to turn. There was something ominous in its bleak exposure to the four quarters of the sky, and something full of ghostly suggestiveness in the gaping mouths of the narrow lanes that led away from it. There was, however, another and a much more definite justification for the quickening, at this point, of any wayfarer’s steps who knew the locality. A stranger to the place, glancing across an empty field, would have observed with no particular interest the presence of a moderately high stone wall protecting a small square enclosure. Were such a one acquainted with the survivals of old usage in English villages, he might have supposed these walls to shut in the now unused space of what was formerly the local “pound,” or repository for stray animals. Such travellers as were familiar with Nevilton knew, however, that sequestered within this citadel of desolation were no living horses nor cattle, but very different and much quieter prisoners. The Methodist cemetery there, dates back, it is said, to the days of religious persecution, to the days of Whitfield and Wesley, if not even further. Our fugitive from the society of those who regard their minds as normally constituted, cast an excited and recognizant eye upon this forlorn enclosure. Plucking a handful of leaves from one of the ash-trees and thrusting them into his pocket, some queer legend--half-remembered in his agitated state--impelling him to this quaint action, he left the roadway, crossed the field, and pushing open the rusty iron gate of the little burying-ground, burst hurriedly in among its weather-stained memorials of the dead. Though not of any great height, the enclosing walls of the place were sufficient to intensify by several degrees the gathering shadows. Outside, in the open field, one would have anticipated a clear hour of twilight before the darkness fell; but here, among the graves of these humble recalcitrants against spiritual authority, it seemed as though the plunge of the planet into its diurnal obscuring was likely to be retarded for only a few brief moments.