Page:Once a Week Volume V.djvu/540

 . 9, 1861.]

day on which Mr. Lennox was buried was heavy and dull; leaden clouds hung over the sky, and the air was oppressed with the weight of an approaching storm. Keefe and three other young men carried the coffin, and Helen followed it with Mrs. Wendell; she would not stay behind; she would not desert the beloved remains while one office of love could be performed. Keefe knew Helen would wish the funeral to be as private as possible, so no stranger was present, except those who assisted in carrying the coffin. Slowly the little company wound along the base of the hills in the early morning, and turning into a path which led up an opening in them, soon reached the sheltered hollow where the burying-ground lay. It was railed in, and sheltered by a few tall pines standing there like perpetual mourners, sighing with their sad and spirit-like cadence to the passing breeze, and bearing aloft their “sculptured cones,” so much reverenced by the fire-worshippers, as holding latent so large a portion of the sacred flame which they adored as typical of the immortal and pervading spirit of the universe. A few wooden tablets and rude headstones tangled with juniper bushes were scattered here and there among the mounds. The grave was already dug; no priest was there to perform the rites either of faith or superstition; no prayer was said, except those breathed silently by Helen and Mrs. Wendell; no word spoken. The coffin was reverently laid in its resting-place; the clay shovelled in, the sods smoothed over. Then every one turned to depart except her whose heart still clung to the dearly beloved tenant of that narrow bed; she could not bear to leave the form so much loved beneath the cold, dark, heavy earth. With drooping head and clasped hands she stood by the grave, motionless as stone.

“Come now, dear,” said Mrs. Wendell, “let us go away.”

“Not yet, not yet,” pleaded Helen; “leave me here a little while, it will do me good.”

“It’s best as she says,” said Mrs. Wendell to Keefe; “I’ll wait for her outside the gate.”

“Let me wait,” said Keefe.

Mrs. Wendell made no objection, she rarely did to anything proposed by Keefe; but before she left him she warned him not to let Helen stay too long, as it looked like rain. Sitting down near the gate of the burying-ground, Keefe waited for what seemed to him a long time, unwilling to intrude on the sacredness of Helen’s grief; inwardly tortured by a sense of his insufficiency to comfort her sorrow, and yet at times daring to indulge in wild hopes of a future when he might permit himself to give utterance to the tender sympathy which filled his heart; when the sound