Audrey

Although the house of worship which boasted as its ornament the Reverend

Gideon Darden was not so large and handsome as Bruton church, nor could

rival the painted glories of Poplar Spring, it was yet a building good

enough,--of brick, with a fair white spire and a decorous mantle of ivy.

The churchyard, too, was pleasant, though somewhat crowded with the dead.

There were oaks for shade, and wild roses for fragrance, and the grass

between the long gravestones, prone upon mortal dust, grew very thick and

green. Outside the gates,--a gift from the first master of Fair

View,--between the churchyard and the dusty highroad ran a long strip of

trampled turf, shaded by locust-trees and by one gigantic gum that became

in the autumn a pillar of fire.

Haward, arriving somewhat after time, found drawn up upon this piece of

sward a coach, two berlins, a calash, and three chaises, while tied to

hitching-posts, trees, and the fence were a number of saddle-horses. In

the shade of the gum-tree sprawled half a dozen negro servants, but on the

box of the coach, from which the restless horses had been taken, there yet

sat the coachman, a mulatto of powerful build and a sullen countenance.

The vehicle stood in the blazing sunshine, and it was both cooler and

merrier beneath the tree,--a fact apparent enough to the coachman, but

the knowledge of which, seeing that he was chained to the box, did him

small good. Haward glanced at the figure indifferently; but Juba,

following his master upon Whitefoot Kate, grinned from ear to ear.

"Larnin' not to run away, Sam? Road's clear: why don' you carry off de

coach?"

Haward dismounted, and leaving Juba first to fasten the horses, and then

join his fellows beneath the gum-tree, walked into the churchyard. The

congregation had assembled, and besides himself there were none without

the church save the negroes and the dead. The service had commenced.

Through the open door came to him Darden's voice: "Dearly beloved

brethren"-Haward waited, leaning against a tomb deep graven with a coat of arms and

much stately Latin, until the singing clave the air, when he entered the

building, and passed down the aisle to his own pew, the chiefest in the

place. He was aware of the flutter and whisper on either hand,--perhaps he

did not find it unpleasing. Diogenes may have carried his lantern not

merely to find a man, but to show one as well, and a philosopher in a pale

gray riding dress, cut after the latest mode, with silver lace and a fall

of Mechlin, may be trusted to know the value as well as the vanity of

sublunary things.