e; and Pip brushed them aside and fell
down beside her.

"Judy, Judy, JUDY!"

The light flickered back in her eyes. She kissed him with pale lips
once, twice; she gave him both her hands, and her last smile.

Then the wind blew over them all, and, with a little shudder, she
slipped away.

CHAPTER XXII

And Last

"She seemed a thing that could not feel
The touch of earthly years."

"No motion has she now--no force;
She neither hears nor sees;
Rolled round in earth's diurnal course,
With rocks and stones and trees."

They went home again, the six of them, and Esther, who, all her
days, "would go the softlier, sadlier" because of the price that
had been paid for the life of her little sweet son. The very air
of Yarrahappini seemed to crush them and hang heavy on their souls.

So when the Captain, who had hurried up to see the last of his poor
little girl, asked if they would like to go home, they all said
"Yes."

There was a green space of ground on a hill-top behind the cottage,
and a clump of wattle trees, dark-green now, but gold-crowned
and gracious in the spring.

This is where they left little Judy. All around it Mr. Hassal had
white tall palings put; the short grave was in the shady corner of
it.

The place looked like a tiny churchyard in a children's country
where there had only been one death.

Or a green fair field, with one little garden bed.

Meg was glad the little mound looked to the east; the suns died
behind it--the orange and yellow and purple suns she could not
bear to watch ever again while she lived.

But away in the east they rose tenderly always, and the light crept
up across the sky to the hill-top in delicate pinks and trembling
blues and brightening greys, but never fiery, yellow streaks, that
made the eyes ache with hot tears.

There was a moon making it white and beautiful when they said
good-bye to it on the last day.

They plucked a blade or two of grass each from the fresh turfs,
and turned away. Nobody cried; the white stillness of the far moon,
the pale, hanging stars, the faint wind stirring the wattles; held
back their tears till they had closed the little gate behind them
and left her alone on the quiet hill-top. Then they went-back
to Misrule, each to pickup the thread of life and go on with the
weaving that, thank God, must be done, or hearts would break
every day.

Meg had grown older; she would never be qu