early-summer-like, in its
warmth.

In the gardens of the old Southern houses that stood along the bay,
roses and petisporum-trees were blooming, with their delicious
fragrance. It was the time of wistarias and wild white lilies, of the
last yellow jas-mines and the first Cherokee roses. It was the
Saturday before Easter Sunday.

In the quaint churchyard of old St. Helena's Church, a little way from
the bay, young figures were busy among the graves with industrious
gardening. At first sight, one might have thought that this pretty
service was rendered only from loving sentiments of loyalty to one's
ancestors, for under the great live-oaks, the sturdy brick walls about
the family burying-places and the gravestones themselves were
moss-grown and ancient-looking; yet here and there the wounded look of
the earth appealed to the eye, and betrayed a new-made grave. The old
sarcophagi and heavy tablets of the historic Beaufort families stood
side by side with plain wooden crosses. The armorial bearings and long
epitaphs of the one and the brief lettering of the other suggested the
changes that had come with the war to these families, yet somehow the
wooden cross touched one's heart with closer sympathy. The padlocked
gates to the small inclosures stood open, while gentle girls passed in
and out with their Easter flowers of remembrance. On the high
churchyard wall and great gate-posts perched many a mocking-bird, and
the golden light changed the twilight under the live-oaks to a misty
warmth of color. The birds began to sing louder; the gray moss that
hung from the heavy boughs swayed less and less, and gave the place a
look of pensive silence.

In the church itself, most of the palms and rose branches were already
in place for the next day's feast, and the old organ followed a fresh
young voice that was being trained for the Easter anthem. The five
doors of the church were standing open. On the steps of that eastern
door which opened midway up the side aisle, where the morning sun had
shone in upon the white faces of a hospital in war-time,--in this
eastern doorway sat two young women.

"I was just thinking," one was saying to the other, "that for the
first time Mistress Sydenham has forgotten to keep this day. You know
that when she has forgotten everything and everybody else, she has
known when Easter came, and has brought flowers to her graves."

"Has she been more feeble lately, do you think?" asked the younger of
th