21, 1754." After copying these two entries, I went out into the churchyard to look for Mary Haygarth's grave.
Under a fine old yew--which had been old a hundred years ago, it seems--I found huddled amongst other headstones one so incrusted with moss, that it was only after scraping the parasite verdure from the stone with my penknife that I was able to discover the letters that had been cut upon it.

I found at last a brief inscription: "Here lieth ye body of MARY HAYGARTH, aged 27.

Born 1727.

Died 1754.
This stone has been set up by one who sorroweth without hope of consolation." A strange epitaph: no scrap of Latin, no text from Scripture, no conventional testimony to the virtues and accomplishments of the departed, no word to tell whether the dead woman had been maid, wife, or widow.

It was the most provoking inscription for a lawyer or a genealogist, but such as might have pleased a poet.
I fancy this Mary Haygarth must have been some quiet creature, with very few friends to sorrow for her loss; perhaps only that one person who sorrowed without hope of consolation.
Such a tombstone might have been set above the grave of that simple maid who dwelt "beside the banks of Dove." This is the uttermost that my patience or ingenuity can do for me at Spotswold.