FOUR days afterward, Rosamond and Leonard and Uncle Joseph met together in the cemetery of the church of Porthgenna.

The earth to which we all return had closed over Her: the weary pilgrimage of Sarah Leeson had come to its quiet end at last. The miner’s grave from which she had twice plucked in secret her few memorial fragments of grass had given her the home, in death, which, in life, she had never known. The roar of the surf was stilled to a low murmur before it reached the place of her rest; and the wind that swept joyously over the open moor paused a little when it met the old trees that watched over the graves, and wound onward softly through the myrtle hedge which held them all embraced alike in its circle of lustrous green.

Some hours had passed since the last words of the burial service had been read. The fresh turf was heaped already over the mound, and the old head-stone with the miner’s epitaph on it had been raised once more in its former place at the head of the grave. Rosamond was reading the inscription softly to her husband. Uncle Joseph had walked a little apart from them while she was thus engaged, and had knelt down by himself at the foot of the mound. He was fondly smoothing and patting the newly laid turf — as he had often smoothed Sarah’s hair in the long-past days of her youth — as he had often patted her hand in the after-time, when her heart was weary and her hair was gray.

“Shall we add any new words to the old, worn letters as they stand now?” said Rosamond, when she had read the inscription to the end. “There is a blank space left on the stone. Shall we fill it, love, with the initials of my mother’s name, and the date of her death? I feel something in my heart which seems to tell me to do that, and to do no more.”

“So let it be, Rosamond,” said her husband. “That short and simple inscription is the fittest and the best.”

She looked away, as he gave that answer, to the foot of the grave, and left him for a moment to approach the old man. “Take my hand, Uncle Joseph,” she said, and touched him gently on the shoulder. “Take my hand, and let us go back together to the house.”

He rose as she spoke, and looked at her doubtfully. The musical box, inclosed in its well-worn leather case, lay on the grave near the place where he had been kneeling. Rosamond took it up from the grass, and slung it in the old place at his side, which it had always occupied when he was away from home. He sighed a little as he thanked h............