CHAPTER VIII.
THERE IS ALWAYS A SKELETON.
The two young men strolled through the village, Maulevrier pausing to exchange greetings with almost everyone he met, and so to the rustic churchyard, above the beck.
The beck was swollen with late rains, and was brawling merrily over its stony bed; the churchyard grass was deep and cool and shadowy under the clustering branches.

The poet's tomb was disappointing in its unlovely simplicity, its stern, slatey hue.

The plainest granite cross would have satisfied Mr.Hammond, or a cross in pure white marble, with a sculptured lamb at the base.

Surely the lamb, emblem at once pastoral and sacred, ought to enter into any monument to Wordsworth; but that gray headstone, with its catalogue of dates, those stern iron railings--were these fit memorials of one whose soul so loved nature's loveliness?
After Mr.Hammond had seen the little old, old church, and the medallion portrait inside, had seen all that Maulevrier could show him, in fact, the two young men went back to the place of graves, and sat on the low parapet above the beck, smoking their cigarettes, and talking with that perfect unreserve which can only obtain between men who are old and tried friends.

They talked, as it was only natural they should talk, of that household at Fellside, where all things were new to John Hammond.
'You like my sister Lesbia ?' said Maulevrier.
'Like her! well, yes.