man in deep mourning, his face mostly concealed in a white handkerchief, and with Priscilla leaning on his arm. Hollingsworth and myself came next. We all stood around the narrow niche in the cold earth; all saw the coffin lowered in; all heard the rattle of the crumbly soil upon its lid, — that final sound, which mortality awakens on the utmost verge of sense, as if in the vain hope of bringing an echo from the spiritual world.

I noticed a stranger, — a stranger to most of those present, though known to me, — who, after the coffin had descended, took up a handful of earth and flung it first into the grave.

I had given up Hollingsworth’s arm, and now found myself near this man.

“It was an idle thing — a foolish thing — for Zenobia to do,”