He was compelled to obey her, and knocking at the door of the clerk’s cottage aroused that astonished and scandalized official into throwing the object required out of his bedroom window. Once inside the churchyard however, the strange and mystical power of the spot brought his mood into nearer conformity with his companion’s. They stopped, as everyone who visits Nevilton churchyard is induced to stop, before the extraordinary tomb of Gideon and Naomi Andersen. The thing had been constructed from the eccentric old carver’s own design, and had proved one of the keenest pleasures of his last hours. Like the whimsical poet Donne, he had derived a sardonic and not altogether holy delight in contemplating before his end the actual slab of earthly consistence that was to make his bodily resurrection so emphatically miraculous. Clavering and Vennie stood for several minutes in mute contemplation before this strange monument. It was composed of a huge, solid block of Leonian stone, carved at the top into the likeness of an enormous human skull, and ornamented, below the skull, by a deeply cut cross surrounded by a circle. This last addition gave to the sacred symbol within it a certain heathen and ungodly look, making it seem as though it were no cross at all, but a pagan hieroglyph from some remote unconsecrated antiquity. The girl laid her fragile hand on the monstrous image of death, which the gloom around them made all the more threatening. “It is wonderful,” she said, “how the power of Christ can change even the darkest objects into beauty. I like to think of Him striking His hand straight through the clumsy half-laws of Man and Nature, and holding out to us the promise of things far beyond all this morbid dissolution.” “You are right, my friend,” answered the priest. “I think the world is really a dark and dreadful place,” she went on. “I cannot help saying so. I know there are people who only see its beauty and joy. I cannot feel like that. If it wasn’t for Him I should be utterly miserable. I think I should go mad. There is too much unhappiness--too much to be borne! But this strong hand of His, struck clean down to us from outside the whole wretched confusion,--I cling to that; and it saves me. I know there are lots of happy people, but I cannot forget the others! I think of them in the night. I think of them always. They are so many--so many!” “Dear child!” murmured the priest, his interlude of casual frivolity melting away like mist under the flame of her conviction. “Do you think,” she continued, “that if we were able to hear the weeping of all those who suffer and have suffered since the beginning of the world, we could endure the idea of going on living? It would be too much! The burden of those tears would darken the sun and hide the moon. It is only His presence in the midst of us,--His presence, coming in from outside, that makes it possible for us to endure and have patience.”