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Chapter I. St. Martin's Grave-Yard.

In an old and ricketty arm-chair, its upholstery whitened-green, (frayed and fringed with age, by a wood fire in his unpretentious cottage, and with the expression of a man prostrate in the abysmal depths of despair, sat Christopher William Whitworth, Right Worshipful Grand Master of the Orange Societies of Shrewsbury, in England, and member of the Local Government Board.

Upon his expansive brow, delineated with furrow upon furrow and the autographs of time, reigned in stern severity embarrassment and unspeakable gloom. His hair was flaxen, long, thickly streaked with grey, and his large blue eyes, full of absorbed and preoccupied expression, told that he was brooding intently over some one particular idea, for he scarcely moved for hours from the chair between the table and the fire.

In the previous year he had left England, and with all his family he had settled in the warmer clime of the Southern States of America, for the amelioration of his eldest son's health. For forty years nightly had he sat meditating in that old arm-chair before retiring to rest; revising in the abstract work completed, or planning out programmes for future occupation. Trained he had been in the art of architecture, and for thirty-five years he had toiled in a double capacity: as an architect on his own account, and as a land-surveyor for the Government of England.

Leaning on his elbow against the little square table, he looked towards a large quarto volume dealing with practical home remedies for the treatment of the sick, as if he had failed to find some information which he had been seeking in its contents. His old-fashioned spectacles lay across the pages opened on the subject of consumption of the lungs, and still he reclined on the old American arm-chair, like a man thwarted, conquered and utterly broken down, until the starlight glow of the summer skies was slowly vanishing before the awakening king of day.

Something unusual must have occurred that day, or was expected to page 2occur that night; something that seemed to banish all thought of sleep from his mind, bind his mental faculties together and focus them, not upon any newly-contemplated building, nor upon any threatening deadlock in the government treasury pay-offices. Foreign to the present trend of his thoughts these former and frequent denizens of his brain, when—as he pondered and sighed and pondered, with a suppressed click the passage door swung on its hinges and there stole into the room towards where he was sitting Miriam, for thirty years his self-denying wife and his constant equal sharer in all eyes and wants Eugene,"

In a hushed tone of voice: "He opened his eyes and wants Eugene," she said as the old man turned on his chair, "I'm going up to the school for Eugene; better sit in the bedroom till I come back."

The old Dutch clock pointed to half-past three; but to remonstrate with the active and agile Miriam was only labour in vain. Indeed, in all matters which she could attend to herself, any offers of assistance were resented as stumbling-blocks to her expedition, while anything requiring quickness and despatch she could carry out with the dexterity of an athlete in full training.

Bareheaded, excepting an old Paisley shawl which she threw over her head and shoulders, on she sped in that darkest hour before the dawn, up the long and steep Galveston hill, beyond whose summit stood the renowned academy of Maximilian Arnold, Master of Arts, of Cambridge; its lofty, tapering spire, in keeping with the motto of that illustrious trainer of the intellect— "Sic itur ad astra"—pointing bolt upright and glimmering in the dark inwards the twinkling stars.

Since his father had settled in Galveston, Eugene Percival Whitworth had been a weekly boarder at the college, giving forth every day new signs of promising distinction, and carrying off with éclat the medals and academical honours. Now he was the don of the school.

Calling up old Matthew, the college porter, Miriam was marshalled to the little dormitory on the third floor, where Eugene lay in wakeful dreams, disturbed by the memories of his suffering brother in Lily Cottage. Hastening back to the scene of the old man's meditations, and the side of his doomed first son, her progress now and then was arrested by a palpitating heart. She held, halting for hreath, upon the arm of Eugene Flurried and panting, they entered the door which she had left ajar, and stood before the death-stricken Gordon, in anguish and tears together.

His voice reduced by Iaryngeal phthisis, the secondary signs of consumption, to a whisper: "I know I am going to die." he said; "I am only a burthen here, and I am quite resigned and happy. I cannot live more than a few hour, and I only wanted to see you Eugene: for I have been dreaming of the sunny days when we chased the butterflies together amongst the yellow dandelions on the hills, and I thought I was a child again among the butterflies and the flowers in the sunniest heavens. In a few hours I shall be free from this slow, overpowering disease. I know it page 3is leaving me because all my pains and distresses are gone, and soon I shall be with my Father in Heaven."

"Pure and undefiled," said Eugene, as with downcast eyes he watched his brother fading away through the gate of death, while smiles illumined his soft, dark eyes, and the hectic crimsoned on his cheeks. Whispering "good-bye" with white parted lips, he reached out his wasted hand to his brother, while, overwhelmed with tears, Miriam smoothed down his raven clusters and around his neck folded her arms with the undying lave of a Magdalen. His face was as calm as that of a child fallen asleep. Not a stir, not a sound was heard again, but a choking convulsive sob from his shuddering father, and the Spirit of Gordon Vincent Whitworth soared in majesty away into the painless realms of peace for ever.

No symbol of ostentatious mourning; no token of loud lamentation, was observable in that disconsolate home; no more than the still deep waters of a sense of irredeemable loss. Wreaths, garlands, crosses and other floral immortelles covered the remains of that spotless life; for Gordon Whitworth had been well-beloved by all who knew him, and his relatives were held in greal regard in the neighbourhood and in the town.

With their own hands Miriam and Eugene laid him and adorned him in the coffin, the perfervid love of his mother forbidding strange hands to touch him, as she knelt beside her coffined love, night and day, until the time appointed for the funeral arrived, again and again repeating her favorite prayer—"Teach us to love one another in Thee and for Thee, and in the world to come unite us at Thy feet, where peace and love are perfect and everlasting."

The death of the deeply-loved Gordon banded with silken cords still more firmly together the ever strong union of that humble household, though none at the time could have foretold what torments for some of its members were in store.

Two days afterwards, on a Friday, the body was laid in the grave in St. Martin's cemetery, situated on the face of a slope breaking away from the Great Rocky Chain, the pall-bearers, Miriam, his father and two brothers, and his last farewell a souvenir of white chrysanthemums and waxen chalice lilies, which Miriam had moistened with the dew of her tears and thrown upon the coffin as it lay in the grave. Sweets to the sweet, farewell!.

The chief study of Miriam now was devoted to the erection of a monument, as an emblem of her supernal love for the son whom the gentle Redeemer bad taken away from the valley of tears, to shine through his good works like the stars of the firmament for ever.

Reduced at the time to straitened circumstances by the pressure of exorbitant medical charges; discharged from the crown lands office, where he had served the government of England so long, on a small superannuation pension, being over sixty years of age, and with high collegiate page 4fees to pay for Eugene, the monument of such a splendour as alone would satisfy the ambition of Miriam was scarcely within the reach of Christopher Whitworth.

It was, however, remembered that an allowance was due to his departed son, insomuch he had been strong and healthy, before he entered the service of the Local Government Board at Shrewsbury, and and had contracted the illness to which he succumbed by overwork at the secretary's offices late into the wintry nights of England.

Thus it was, that, after instituting inquiries into the amount, the school-boy Eugene drew out a claim on behalf of his father for the sum of two hundred pounds. After six months' delay, during which claim forms were entered, received, referred, withdrawn, passed, signed and counter-signed by legions of supernumerous and idling clerks clerks in the government pay offices, and with the influential assistance of a minister of justice and several members of the house of commons and the House of Lords, the claim of two hundred pounds was ultimately paid. The difficulty about the monument was cleared away, and the schooner "Lycidas" brought it from the eternal city of Rome.

Now, there on that elevated prairie plateau overlooking a vast expanse of sea and mountain range, towering and picturesque she stands with spreading wings and outstretched arms—an angel of spotless Italian marble, appealing to the great architect of the universe. At her feet sat Miriam, after a long walk laden with flowers, evening after evening, speaking to the grave as if it were a tomb of the living and her compassionate voice was heard by the invisible spirit of Gordon. Happy she felt in the thought that her darling boy was surrounded in death by the graves of seven little children, for were they not all of the kingdom of heaven, and were not her happiest days the days when her own were young? To sit beside the grave or loiter among the crypts, the vaults and sin and sorrow were no more—a land of rest and balm, whose portals no evil thing ever entered. Other mourners came to plant the graves of their departed once a week or once a month or once a year: Miriam was there for hours almost every day, and no flower in her vases and urns ever drooped its withering head during a cycle of thirty years.

The blossoming grass grew long and tangled around, and throughout the enclosure the grey headstones here and there slanted or even had fallen, while some of the inscriptions were hidden by lichens and moss. Over the place hovered shadowy silence only broken by bird-cries, the rustle of the leaves and other wood sounds, or from among the long prairie grasses the faint tinkle of a cow-bell. Cypresses stood dark and glamorous against the blue sky, swaying and sighing under thesoft breezes; while in the topmost arms of the pines the magpie and the brown hawk built their nests and the cricket chirruped its evening cadences among the graves. The hum of the locust resounded from over the plain.

Sailing home in the merchant wool-packet "Baltimore" after a long page 5voyage to Australia, China. Japan and the islands of the East Indies, swaggered into Lily cottage a sailor-boy, who, from running away to sea with the aspiration of visiting every port in the world, and from his seafaring propensities in general, was commonly known by the name of the "Flying Dutchman." although his proper name was Roderick. In Lily Cottage he was always called Dolly.

Sunburnt and robust with the bronze of the sea, and swaggering with the roll of the buoyant wave, his first inquiries were concerning his brother, with whom he had parted two years before, and although Gordon was ill at the time, Dolly imagined that by then he would be better, if not recovered. Saddened by the news of his death, and asked if he had not seen his mother, who had, as old Christopher supposed, gone to meet him when the "Baltimore" came to her moorings, the roving sailor replied that he had met nobody whom he knew on the Galveston quay.

Wondering for a while where Miriam could have gone, the old man surmised that she would be found in the cemetery, whereupon Christopher Whilworth and the youthful midshipman who had just come home bent their steps thither together. Over the hills they wended their way to the prairie, where the rising yellow moon scattered her phosphorescent beams over the land of the dead, and where they found Miriam sitting as ever in wonder and prayer alone. Their footsteps muffled by the carpet of the fallen leaves, they walked under the arching ailanthus to the grave.

"Poor Gordon, poor Gordon," muttered Dolly, his eyes filling with tears at the reminiscences of the departed flower of the family. "I thought you would be well again when I came home —well again when I came home.

Turning to his mother, he looked in compassion upon her annnish-stricken pain-wrought face, and repressing his own emotions, he continued—"I am home for good after that last trip, mother; I am tired of the sea and we have been ship-wrecked twice since I left home. I am going as fireman on a Mississippi steamer around the Gulf, so that I shall be home every few days, and at least every Sunday."

Exultant in the warmth of her love and in the ecstasy at her sailor-boy's return; imploring him to relinquish the roving life of a sailor, and stay with her in his dead brother's place, as Eugene was going to the University of Philadelphia, and only Brosie was left at home, she kissed his sun-burnt cheeks in the overflow of her joy, and the re-union of Dolly, the Flying Dutchman, with his mother was undisturbed by the boatswain for years.