It broke out again
in another tree a little farther away, and again in another. I
followed it, and it led me round the wood towards the hilltop to the
foot of the steps, two short flights; the second flight, or part of it
at least, has to be removed when the vault is opened. It consists, no
doubt, of a single chamber with shelves along either side; curiosity
leads few into vaults not more than a hundred years old; above the
vault is the monument, a very simple one, a sort of table built in,
and when my father was buried, a priest scrambled up or was lifted up
by the crowd, and he delivered a funeral oration from the top of it.
That day the box edgings were trampled under foot, and all the flowers
in the beds. My mother, perhaps, cared little for flowers, or she did
not live here sufficiently long to see that this garden was carefully
tended; for years there were no children to come here for a walk, and
it was thought sufficient to keep in repair the boundary wall so that
cattle should not get in. No trees were cut here when the Woods were
thinned, and the pines and the yews have grown so thickly that the
place is overshadowed; and the sepulchral dark is never lifted even at
midday. At the back of the tomb, in the wood behind it, the headstones
of old graves show above the ground, though the earth has nearly
claimed them; only a few inches show above the dead leaves; all this
hillside must have been a graveyard once, hundreds of years ago, and
this ancient graveyard has never been forgotten by me, principally on
account of something that happened long ago when I was a little child.
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