Page 128 - Fairbrass

that he, too, did not realise what was going
on. Jt seemed to make things doubly sad

that instead of feeling intensely sorry they

were all profoundly indifferent. At the
grave-side, however, all this was altered.

There, on the tombstone, was the name of

the young wife who had been buried forty
years ago, and there, deep down in the

vault that was now opened to receive her

husband, lay the coffin in which she slept.
Forty years ago ! Fairbrass pictured to

himself how his grandfather, then a young
man, must have stood grief-stricken on

this very spot, and had no doubt that he
had often longed for the day to come when

he might share his wife’s resting place.

Then the reality of the scene came home
to him, and the tears gathered in his eyes.
And when at last the coffin was lowered

into the grave to lie peacefully by the one

that had waited for it so long, he felt his
father's hand tremble in his, and knew that

he, too, was touched.