CHAPTER XXI. AILSIE'S GRAVE. THE moon was high over the hills, and a light breeze rustled along the hedge-rows, when Barbara slipped out of the great gates of Coppeshall. As quietly as she had first entered them, did she now depart; and, turning her back upon Barden Brow, begin the journey to her new home. She walked quickly on, her eyes too dim with pressing tears to see the beauty of the long sloping cornfields, and sheep-dotted meadows, as they lay tranquil in the moonlight; her ears too full of questioning, reproachful voices from the past, to perceive the gleam of the trickling rill that ran by the road side, the chirp of the grasshopper in the hedge, or the many other subdued voices of the summer night. She stopped before a low, white stile, for it was the last place on the road from which she could catch a glimpse of home. Leaning her arms upon it, she looked across the long field which lay between the road and the village. She could almost smile as she asked herself what it was from which she found it so hard to drag herself away. A few clustering cottages, yellow hay-ricks, and slanting fields-what was there in these to regret leaving? What was there? It might rather be asked-what was there not? Was there a single cottage that had not some dark, or pathetic, or laughter-moving history attached to it? Was there a rick of hay which she had not known as blooming daisied grass; a field of ripe corn which she, or others dear to her, had not watched since when its furrows lay open-mouthed from the plough? Above all, was not the whole consecrated by the name of home, and teeming with a thousand thousand memories, which rushed in upon her with such overwhelming force, that I doubt if Ruth, gazing back through her tears upon her beautiful country, stretched her arms towards it with a greater yearning than did poor Barbara towards that little straggling nest upon the hill side? Her heart seemed bursting as she pressed it against the stile; and she felt the longing of a child to lay her head upon some kindly breast and weep out all the passion of her grief. What right had this man to come between her and her mother? It was very hard, now that this trial had come upon her, that she should turn away from her to him. Who else had she to sympathise with, and strengthen her for the task? True, there was Isaac Sleigh; and once she had a great mind to go to him. He might, as he had often done before, infuse into her troubled, fainting heart a something of his own sweet patience and religious faith, and send her away a little comforted. But then he knew nothing about these changes, and she could not bear to talk of them. Oh, no! She could not go to Isaac Sleigh. Who, then, could she go to? A spasmodic smile passed over her face, and setting her foot on the stile, she looked along the footpath curving whitely in the moonlight to the back of the churchyard. She had come away much earlier than was necessary to meet the coach. She could reach the spot on which her mind's eye was fixed, and be back again in plenty of time. So she crossed the stile, and was soon hurrying along the field in the black shadow of the hedge. The creak of the gate when she opened it broke harshly on the profound silence of the churchyard; and her own footsteps seemed to awaken strange echoing sounds from behind the white tombstones as she walked quickly up the narrow middle path. She stood still between the church and the low stone wall which divided the churchyard from the lane leading in one direction up to the parsonage, and in the other down to the village. Quitting the path, she began to thread the way among the maze of narrow mounds unmarked by stone or tree until she came to a very tiny one, where a fragile willow bending over from the headstone mingled with the grass its long leaves, all white and silvery in the moonlight. How sweet, how tranquil a home! thought the wanderer, while she cowered down beside it, fearing to let the cry of anguish and yearning which rose to her lips break upon the holy silence. Silence I should hardly call it, for the long grasses waving together, the low sigh of the cypresses round an ancient family tomb, the grasshoppers calling to one another shrilly from grave to grave, the rustling of the ivy on the church wall, kept up a perpetual sweet and faint sound that seemed like music from endless instruments, and voices descending with the moonlight into this garden of the dead, to quicken the sad with whispers of immortality. O, to be one of those senseless mounds!-one of the peaceful dead! Why should they lie there in such sweet rest, while she, with a torn and bleeding heart, must struggle on in the bitter world alone? Just then it was as if every sorrow that her soul had ever felt lived in it afresh in all its bitterness. The first break with Abel, the loss of her child, the death of her true and noble-hearted friend, the parting with Lancelot, these first harsh words from her mother, all swelled her heart to bursting; and again she abandoned herself to grief, wild, passionate, and unrestrained; she clasped the little mound with her arms, she buried her face in the wet grass, crying in a voice stifled with great sobs, "Ailsie, Ailsie, darling! Mother wants thee. Speak to her. Her heart is breaking. Come back to her! O, my God! Why was she taken from me-my child—my sweet little one, that kept me from getting hard and cold? I would understand, but I cannot-No! I cannot !" She laid her cheek upon the little, rough headstone, and bathed it with her hot tears; and the willow bent lovingly over her weary frame, and the mysterious music of the churchyard hummed about her dreamily and plaintively, but with an inner voice of joy. And this music, and the scene, and the tender beauty of the night, seemed to draw the sting and passion from Barbara's misery, soften it, and steep it with poetry, till it became a calm and holy thing. She stopped her tears, and gazed with new tenderness and awe upon the little turf flowers which she had crushed under her; for as they rosc one by one, -the daisies so lily-like and pure, the pale evening primroses drawing their golden glimmer from the stars,-she was filled with a new and exquisite delight; and clasping her hands to her breast, and raising her eyes to heaven, cried, in trembling joy,-" She lives!-my hope!-my darling!—my little Ailsie! These flowers, nourished by her pure body, are full of her and her sweetness. She is passing through a great and glorious change. But she lives! I shall see her-I shall hold her again!" Then, on her knees, with tears streaming down her cheeks, she read aloud, in a kind of ecstasy, the lines which Isaac Sleigh had caused to be engraved upon the round stone:— “SUFFER LITTLE CHILDREN TO COME UNTO ME." Luke, chap. xviii., v. 16. Go, little martyr, go, and plead For struggling souls forlorn; Tell Him those baby-hands that bleed No shining robes, no martyr's crown, O, darling, seek to win; But lay thy stainless glory down To ransom souls in sin. A strange and startling sound thrilled through Barbara as she finished the last line. It was like a half-smothered sob, that seemed to come from the depths of the earth. Rising quickly, and looking down, she saw the shadow of a man's form projected across the grave. She recognised it, and drew back hastily; but Abel Drake, instead of noticing her, knelt bare-headed by the grave, and muttered some words in a voice so broken and thick, that she only caught one or two, but those made her shudder, and say involuntarily, "No, no; hush! I did not mean that!" He raised his face as she spoke, and its wan, jaded, and sorrow-stricken look, as the pale light of the moon fell on it, pained her to the heart. Trying to steady her voice, she held out her hand across the grave, saying, "Let us, as we are now going to part for ever, part |