Читать книгу Maid Marian, and Other Stories онлайн
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It was this Amy Baskerville whose shadowy, girlish presence was all over Malvern. She was only twenty when she died, as the plain headstone in the old family burying-ground said. The brick walls of the graveyard were crumbling, and the iron gate had given way. Cattle and sheep browsed on the green mounds. Many of the tombs of the dead-and-gone Baskervilles were marble slabs supported on pillars, of which the solid brick and mortar had disappeared, leaving them like gigantic tables. The later graves were sunken, especially those of Colonel Baskerville and his wife, over which a simple monument was raised, inscribed to the memory of Colonel Marmaduke Baskerville and Nancy, his wife. Those over the two sons were highly ornate, and bore long epitaphs: "Marmaduke, who was killed while gallantly leading his regiment, after the fall of both his colonel and lieutenant-colonel," followed by a long list of Marmaduke's virtues; and "George, who died of wounds contracted in the service of his country, at the early age of eighteen." The story was plain. The poor old colonel and his wife had put up the showy tombstones with Pity weeping over an urn, and their executors had put up the plain stones over the father and mother and little Amy.