It was late in the afternoon when I came to the lodge gate of the burial-place and inquired there as to the position of the grave. Indeed, in the quarter where I found her the graves lay so close that it seemed almost as if the coffins must touch underground. My eyes filled with humble tears as I stood looking down on the thin green mound. A little cross of stone stood at the head and on it “D. M.” and the date of her death. The grave had been carefully tended--lovingly trimmed and weeded and coaxed to the greenest growth in those nine short months. A little bush rose stood at the foot, and on the breast of the hillock, a bunch of rich, fading flowers lay. They must have been placed there within the last two or three days only--by the same hands that had gardened the sprouting turf--that had raised the simple cross and written thereon the date of a great heart’s breaking. I placed my own sad token of autumn flowers nearer the foot of the mound, and, going to the cross, bent and kissed it. My eyes were so blinded, my throat so strangled, that for the moment I felt as if, as I did so, it put its arms about my neck and that Dolly’s soft cheek was laid against mine. I know that I rose peaceful with the assurance of pardon; and that, by and by, that gentle, unresting spirit was to extend to me once more, in the passing of a dreadful peril, the saving beneficence of its presence. CHAPTER XXXVII. A FACE. Dark was falling as on my return I came within sound of the mill race. I thought I could make out a little group of people leaning over the stone balustrade of the bridge as I approached. Such I found to be the case, and among them Dr. Crackenthorpe standing up gaunt in his long brown coat. I was turning in at the yard, when this individual hailed me, and by doing so brought all the faces round in my direction. I walked up to him. “Well?” I said. “These good folk are curious. It’s no affair of mine, but half a minute ago there came a yell out of the old cabin yonder fit to wake the dead.” “Well?” I said, again, with a mighty assumption of coolness I hardly felt. “Oh, don’t suppose I care. It only seemed to me that some day, perhaps, you’ll have the place stoned about your ears, if you don’t let a little more light in.” A murmur went up from the half-dozen rustics and brainless idlers. “We don’t warnt no drownding ghosteses in Winton,” said a voice. I went straight up to them. “Don’t you?” I said. “Then you’d best keep out of reach of them that can make you that and something worse. I suppose some of you have cried out with the lumbago before now?” “That warn’t no lumbago cry, master.” “Wasn’t it, now? Have you ever had it?” “No--I harsn’t.” “I’ll give you a good imitation”--and I made a rush at the fellow who spoke. The crowd scattered, and the man, suddenly backing, toppled over with a crack that brought a yell out of him.