Читать книгу The Dark River онлайн

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"Your father chose this place when he knew he would die. He wanted only a coral stone to mark it. Mr. Tyson thought the others should be the same."

McLeod nodded. He was deeply moved at the sight of these lonely graves. His parents had been scarcely more than names to him; he had long since come to think of Alan Hardie's father as his father and their home as his. Now, for the first time, he was conscious of a poignant sense of loss, of what might have been. Fond as he was of General Hardie, he realized that he had not taken the place of the father who lay here. He thought of the home in Devonshire where so many generations of McLeods had lived and died; it had been let to strangers since his childhood and held no memories for him. Only in this solitary place could he recall in a dim way the parents who had loved him and planned for his future so many years ago. He could imagine his mother's anguish when both knew that the end, for his father, could not be far off, and her loneliness after the end had come. He looked at the tiny grave beside hers.