"It looks pretty steep," Lewis objected; and she flung out
her hands with an impatient gesture.
"I love to climb!" she said. So here they were, almost at the top,
panting and toiling, Athalia's skirts wet with dew, and Lewis's face
drawn with fatigue.
"Look!" she said; "it's all open! We can sit down and see all over
the world!" She left the road, springing lightly through the fringing
bay and briers toward an open space on the hillside. "There is a gate
in the wall!" she called out; "it seems to be some sort of enclosure.
Lewis, help me to open the gate! Hurry! What a queer place!
What do you suppose it is?"
The gate opened into a little field bounded by a stone wall;
the grass had been lately mowed, and the stubble, glistening with dew,
showed the curving swaths of the scythe; across it, in even lines
from wall to wall, were rows of small stakes painted black.
Here and there were faint depressions, low, green cradles in the grass;
each depression was marked at the head and foot by these iron stakes,
hardly higher than the stubble itself.
"Shakers' graveyard, I guess," Lewis said; "I've heard that they
don't use gravestones. Peaceful place, isn't it?"
Her vivid face was instantly grave. "Very peaceful! Oh," she added,
as they sat down in the shadow of a pine, "don't you sometimes want
to lie down and sleep--deep down in the grass and flowers?"
"Well," he confessed, "I don't believe it would be as interesting
as walking round on top of them.
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