"Matters are very much the same in any old English churchyard," said the English stranger. "But, my good friend, I have come three thousand miles, partly to find this grave, and am a little disappointed to find my labor lost."
"Ah! and you are the man my father was looking for," said the grave-digger, nodding his head at Mr. Hammond. "My father, who was a grave-digger afore me, died four and thirty years ago, when we were under the King; and says he, 'Ebenezer, do not you turn up a sod in this spot, till you have turned up every other in the ground.' And I have always obeyed him."
"And what was the reason of such a singular prohibition?" asked Hammond.
"My father knew," said the grave-digger, "and he told me the reason too; but since we are under the republic, we have given up remembering those old-world legends, as we used to. The newspapers keep us from talking in the chimney-corner; and so things go out of our minds. An old man, with his stories of what he has seen, and what his great-grandfather saw before him, is of little account since newspapers came up. Stop--I remember--no, I forget,--it was something about the grave holding a witness, who had been sought before and might be again."
"And that is all you know about it?" said Hammond.
"All,--every mite," said the old grave-digger. "But my father knew, and would have been glad to tell you the whole story. There was a great deal of wisdom and knowledge, about graves especially, buried out yonder where my old father was put away, before the Stamp Act was thought of. But it is no great matter, I suppose. People don't care about old graves in these times. They just live, and put the dead out of sight and out of mind."
"Well; but what have you done with the headstone?" said the Doctor. "You can't have eaten it up."
"No, no, Doctor," said the grave-digger, laughing; "it would crack better teeth than mine, old and crumbly as it is. And yet I meant to do something with it that is akin to eating; for my oven needs a new floor, and I thought to take this stone, which would stand the fire well. But here," continued he, scraping away the snow with his shovel, a task in which little Ned gave his assistance,--"here is the headstone, just as I have always seen it, and as my father saw it before me."