Hide and Seek

a stranger who had been buried somewhere in the churchyard better than twenty years ago. The man was both stupid and surly, and would give no advice, except that it was useless to look near where he was digging, for they were all respectable townspeople buried about there.

Mat walked round to the other side of the church. Here the graves were thicker than ever; for here the poor were buried. He went on slowly through them, with his eyes fixed on the ground, towards some trees which marked the limits of the churchyard; looking out for a place to begin his search in, where the graves might be comparatively few, and where his head might not get confused at the outset. Such a place he found at last, in a damp corner under the trees. About this spot the thin grass languished; the mud distilled into tiny water-pools; and the brambles, briars, and dead leaves lay thickly and foully between a few ragged turf-mounds. Could they have laid her here? Could this be the last refuge to which Mary ran after she fled from home?

A few of the mounds had stained moldering tomb-stones at their heads. He looked at these first; and finding only strange names on them, turned next to the mounds marked out by cross-boards of wood. At one of the graves the cross-board had been torn, or had rotted away, from its upright supports, and lay on the ground weather- stained and split, but still faintly showing that it had once had a few letters cut in it. He examined this board to begin with, and was trying to make out what the letters were, when the sound of some one approaching disturbed him. He looked up, and saw a woman walking slowly towards the place where he was standing.

It was Mrs. Peckover herself! She had taken a prescription for her sick brother to the chemist's—had bought him one or two little things he wanted in the High Street—and had now, before resuming her place at his bedside, stolen a few minutes to go and look at the grave of Madonna's mother. It was many, many years since Mrs. Peckover had last paid a visit to Bangbury churchyard.

She stopped and hesitated when she first caught sight of Mat; but, after a moment or two, not being a woman easily baulked in anything when she had once undertaken to do it, continued to advance, and never paused for the second time until she had come close to the grave by which Mat stood, and was looking him steadily in the face, exactly across it.

He was the first to speak. 'Do you know whose grave this is?' he asked.

'Yes, sir,' answered Mrs. Peckover, glancing indignantly at the broken board and the mud and brambles all about it. 'Yes, sir, I do know; and, what's more, I know that it's a disgrace to the parish. Money has been paid twice over to keep it decent; and look what a state it's left in!'

'I asked you whose grave it was,' repeated Mat, impatiently.

'A poor, unfortunate, forsaken creature's, who's gone to Heaven if ever an afflicted, repenting woman went there yet!' answered Mrs. Peckover, warmly.

'Forsaken? Afflicted? A woman, too?' Mat repeated to himself, thoughtfully.

'Yes, forsaken and afflicted,' cried Mrs. Peckover, overhearing him. 'Don't you say no ill of her, whoever you are. She shan't be spoken unkindly of in my hearing, poor soul!'

Mat looked up suddenly and eagerly. 'What's your name?' he inquired.

'My name's Peckover, and I'm not ashamed of it,' was the prompt reply. 'And, now, if I may make so bold, what's yours?'

Mat took from his pocket the Hair Bracelet, and, fixing his eyes intently on her face, held it up, across the grave, for her to look at. 'Do you know this?' he said.

Mrs. Peckover stooped forward, and closely inspected the Bracelet for a minute or two. 'Lord save us!' she exclaimed, recognizing it, and confronting him with cheeks that had suddenly become colorless, and eyes that stared in terror and astonishment. 'Lord save us! how did you come by that? And who for mercy's sake are you?'

'My name's Matthew Grice,' he answered quickly and sternly. 'This Bracelet belonged to my sister, Mary Grice. She run away from home, and died, and was buried in Bangbury churchyard. If you know her grave, tell me in plain words—is it here?'

Breathless as she was with astonishment, Mrs. Peckover managed to stammer a faint answer in the affirmative, and to add that the initials, 'M. G.,' would be found somewhere on the broken board lying at their feet. She then tried to ask a question or two in her turn; but the words died away in faint exclamations of surprise. 'To think of me and you meeting together!' was all she could say;—'her own brother, too! Oh! to think of that!—only to think of that!'

Mat looked down at the mud, the brambles, and the rotting grass that lay over what had once been a living and loving human creature. The dangerous brightness glittered in his eyes, the cold change spread fast over his cheeks, and the scars of the arrow-wounds began to burn redly and more redly, as he whispered to himself—'I'll be even yet, Mary, with the man who laid you here!'

'Does Mr. Blyth know who you are, sir?' asked Mrs. Peckover, hesitating and trembling as she put this question. 'Did he give you the Bracelet?'

She stopped. Mat was not listening to her. His eyes were fastened on the grave: he was still talking to himself in quick whispering tones.

'Her Bracelet was hid from me in another man's chest,' he said—'I've found her Bracelet. Her child was hid from me in another man's house—I've found her child. Her grave was hid from me in a strange churchyard—I've found her grave. The man who laid her in it is hid from me still—I shall find him!'

'Please do listen to me, sir, for one moment,' pleaded Mrs. Peckover, more nervously than before. 'Does Mr. Blyth know about you? And little Mary—oh, sir, whatever you do, pray, pray don't take her away from where she is now! You can't mean to do that, sir, though you are her own mother's brother? You can't, surely?'

He looked up at her so quickly, with such a fierce, steady, serpent-glitter in his light-grey eyes, that she recoiled a step or two; still pleading, however, with desperate perseverance for an answer to her last question.

'Only tell me, sir, that you don't mean to take little Mary away, and I won't ask you to say so much as another word! You'll leave her with Mr. and Mrs. Blyth, won't you, sir? For your sister's sake, you'll leave her with the poor bed-ridden lady that's been like a mother to her for so many years past?—for your dear, lost sister's sake, that I was with when she died—'

'Tell me about her.' He said those few words with surprising gentleness, as Mrs. Peckover thought, for such a rough-looking man.