The Way to Peace | Page 5

it, in even lines from wall to
wall, were rows of small stakes painted black. Here and there were
faint depressions, low, green cradles in the grass; each depression was
marked at the head and foot by these iron stakes, hardly higher than the
stubble itself.
"Shakers' graveyard, I guess," Lewis said; "I've heard that they don't
use gravestones. Peaceful place, isn't it?"
Her vivid face was instantly grave. "Very peaceful! Oh," she added, as
they sat down in the shadow of a pine, "don't you sometimes want to lie
down and sleep--deep down in the grass and flowers?"
"Well," he confessed, "I don't believe it would be as interesting as
walking round on top of them."
She looked at him in despair.
"Come, now," he defended himself, "you don't take much to peace
yourself at home."
"You don't understand!" she said, passionately.
"There, there, little Tay," he said, smiling, and putting a soothing hand
on hers; "I guess I do--after a fashion."
It was very still; below them the valley had suddenly brimmed with
sunshine that flickered and twinkled on the birch leaves or shimmered
on sombre stretches of pine and spruce. Close at hand, pennyroyal grew
thick in the shadow of the wall; and just beyond, mullen candles cast
slender bars of shade across the grass. The sunken graves and the lines
of iron markers lay before them.
"How quiet it is!" she said, in a whisper.

"I guess I'll smoke," Lewis said, and scratched a match on his trousers.
"How can you!" she protested; "it is profane!"
He gave her an amused look, but lighted his cigar and smoked dreamily
for a minute; then he drew a long breath. "I was pretty tired," he said,
and turned to glance back at the road. A horse and cart were coming in
at the open gate; the elderly driver, singing to himself, drew up abruptly
at the sight of the two under the pine-tree, then drove toward them, the
wheels of the cart jolting cheerfully over the cradling graves. He had a
sickle in his hand, and as he clambered down from the seat, he said,
with friendly curiosity:
"You folks are out early, for the world's people."
"Is this a graveyard?" Athalia demanded, impetuously.
"Yee," he said, smiling; "it's our burial-place; we're Shakers."
"But why are there just the stakes--without names?"
"Why should there be names?" he said, whimsically; "they have new
names now."
"Where is your community? Can we go and visit it?"
"Yee; but we're not much to see," he said; "just men and women, like
you. Only we're happy. I guess that's all the difference."
"But what a difference!" she exclaimed; and Lewis smiled.
"I've come up for pennyroyal," the Shaker explained, sociably; "it
grows thick round here."
"Tell me about the Shakers," Athalia pleaded. "What do you believe?"
"Well," he said, a simple shrewdness glimmering in his brown eyes, "if
you go to the Trustees' House, down there in the valley, Eldress
Hannah'll tell you all about us. And the sisters have baskets and pretty
truck to sell--things the world's people like. Go and ask the Eldress
what we believe, and she'll show you the baskets."
She turned eagerly to her husband. "Never mind the ten-o'clock train,
Lewis. Let us go!"
"We could take a later train, all right," he admitted, "but--"
"Oh, PLEASE!" she entreated, joyously. "We'll help you pick
pennyroyal," she added to the Shaker.
But this he would not allow. "I doubt you'd be careful enough," he said,
mildly; "Sister Lydia was the only female I ever knew who could pick
herbs."
"Do you get paid for the work you do?" Athalia asked, practically.

Lewis flushed at the boldness of such a question, but the old man
chuckled.
"Should I pay myself?" he asked.
"You own everything in common, don't you?" Lewis said.
"Yee," said the Shaker; "we're all brothers and sisters. Nobody tries to
get ahead of anybody else."
"And you don't believe in marriage?" Athalia asserted.
"We are as the angels of God," he said, simply.
He left them and began to sickle his herbs, with the cheerfully obvious
purpose of escaping further interruption.
Athalia instantly bubbled over with questions, but Lewis could tell her
hardly more of the Shakers than she knew already.
"No, it isn't free love," he said; "they're decent enough. They believe in
general love, not particular, I suppose. . . . 'Thalia, do you think it's
worth while to wait over a train just to see the settlement?"
"Of course it is! He said they were happy; I would like to see what kind
of life makes people happy."
He looked at the lighted end of his cigar and smiled, but he said
nothing. Afterward, as they followed the cart across the field and out
into