hilltops. I looked up; away on the knob at the summit of the hill there was an old graveyard—that was a curious custom, to put our dead on the highest point of land. A patch of sunlight lay on this village of the dead—and as I looked a thing caught my eye.
I turned in the saddle.
"I saw something flash up there, Uncle Abner."
"Flash," he said—"like a weapon?"
"Glitter," I said. And I caught up the bridle-rein.
But Abner put his hand on the bit.
"Quietly, Martin," he said. "We will ride slowly round the hill, as though we were looking for the cattle, and go up behind that knob; there is a ridge there and we shall not be seen until we come out on the crest of the hill beside the graveyard."
We rode idly away, stopping now and then, like persons at their leisure. But I was afire with interest. All the way to the crest of the hill the blood skipped in my veins. The horses made no sound on the carpet of green sod. And when we came out suddenly beside the ancient graveyard I fully expected to see there a brace of robbers—like some picture in a story—with bloody cloths around their heads and pistols in their belts; or two bewhiskered pirates before a heap of pieces-of-eight.
On the tick of the clock I was disillusioned, however. A man who had been kneeling by a grave rose. I knew him in the twinkling of an eye. He
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