VALLEY

32 RAINBOW VALLEYIt was surrounded on three sides by a dyke ofstones and sod, topped by a gray and uncertain paling.Outside the dyke grew a row of tall fir trees withthick, balsamic boughs. The dyke, which had beenbuilt by the first settlersof the Glen, was old enoughto be beautiful, with mosses and green things growingout of its crevices, violets purplingat its base in theearly spring days, and asters and golden-rod makingan autumnal glory in its corners. Little ferns clusteredcompanionably between its stones, and here and therea big bracken grew.On the eastern side there was neither fence nordyke. The graveyard there straggled off into a youngfir plantation, ever pushing nearer to the graves anddeepeningeastward into a thick wood. The air wasalways full of the harp-like voices of the sea,and themusic of gray old trees, and in the spring mornings thechoruses of birds in the elms around the two churchessang of life and not of death.The Meredith childrenloved the old graveyard.Blue-eyed ivy, "garden-spruce," and mint ran riotover the sunken graves. Blueberry bushes grew lavishlyin the sandy corner next to the fir wood. Thevarying fashions of tombstones for three generationswere to be found there, from the flat, oblong, red sandstoneslabs of old settlers,down through the days ofweeping willows and clasped hands, to the latest monstrositiesof tall "monuments" and draped urns. Oneof the latter, the biggest and ugliest in the graveyard,