4

wood-lands, and its uncultivated fields, for round the log
parsonage house, much out of repair, stood in an adjoining field
on a rising ground, and was now tenanted by an old man
who paid is rent, by his service as sexton. When
required, and well paid, he would dig the graves, but ordin-
arily the country people, saved this expence, and dug the
graves of their kindred and neighbours with their
own hands. Kindred, indeed, were seldom left to this
sad office, one neighbour, kindly helping another on
such occasions. But William asked no such assistance,
feeling a kind of gloomy pleasure, in performing this
last-sad duty, for the adopted mother of his heart.
He borrowed a spade and pick axe of the good
-natured sexton, and looking about for the little grave, in which
he had assisted to bury a brother of his Lucy, determined
to dig that of the poor Mother, along side. It was in
a remote corner of this wild, solitary burial place, and
so over grown with bushes and briars, that he could scarcely
find it. The great-oak, which had for ages, shaded that
solitary corner, had been blown down, by some wintry
storm, and with its shatter'd and decaying branches cover'd
the little heap of earth, he had roused over little
Harry. He had again to go to the sexton, to borrow
an axe, to lop away the huge limbs of this gigant-
ic tree, which cover'd the ground for a considerable
space. [The country-school house, stood in one corner
of the church year, by the road-side--It was the noon
-day hour, when the boys were let lose from school
to eat their dinners and play a while, until sum-
moned to the afternoon's lessions--Some were
gathering chestnuts, from the large trees which grew
near, some playing hide and seek among the old tombs
whose marble slabs covered the ashes of the wealthy planters
who once lived in the vicinity, divided from the humbler graves
of the poor, by palings, now falling in broken heaps
around the mould-cover'd tomb-stones. While others, seated
on some newer and whiter monument, over a { ?} {?}