by many thousands of visitors every year. What most interested me was
the sight of two small boys playing in the churchyard. The village
church, as at Silchester, is inside the old Roman walls, in a corner,
the village itself being some distance away. After strolling round the
churchyard I sat down on a stone under the walls and began watching the
two boys--little fellows of the cottage class from the village who had
come, each with a pair of scissors, to trim the turf on two adjoining
mounds. The bigger of the two, who was about ten years old, was very
diligent and did his work neatly, trimming the grass evenly and giving
the mound a nice smooth appearance. The other boy was not so much
absorbed in his work; he kept looking up and making jeering remarks and
faces at the other, and at intervals his busy companion put down his
shears and went for him with tremendous spirit. Then a chase among and
over the graves would begin; finally, they would close, struggle,
tumble over a mound and pommel one another with all their might. The
struggle over, they would get up, shake off the dust and straws, and go
back to their work. After a few minutes the youngest boy recovered from
his punishment, and, getting tired of the monotony, would begin teasing
again, and a fresh flight and battle would ensue.

By-and-by, after witnessing several of these fights, I went down and
sat on a mound next to theirs and entered into conversation with them.

"Whose grave are you trimming?" I asked the elder boy.

It was his sister's, he said, and when I asked him how long she had
been dead, he answered, "Twenty years." She had died more than ten
years before he was born. He said there had been eight of them born,
and he was the youngest of the lot; his eldest brother was married and
had children five or six years old. Only one of the eight had died--