heated granaries. The
barn-yard was vocal with awakening sounds. The dove-cots buzzed with
wooings; the eaves grew populous with swallows, and the thatched roofs
of the pens and stables were covered with poultry grubbing for the
earliest worm.

It was the resurrection of nature, nowhere felt with such keen
exhilarance as in arctic latitudes. From the far off mountains, the
clouds of murky vapour that lifted and rolled away, leaving the purple
summits towering up to receive the first kiss of the rosy dawn and the
last embrace of the golden sunset, were emblems of the winter's gloom
replaced by that spring-tide brightness which aroused new hopes and a
revived interest in the souls of men. The crocus of the glen, the
anemone of the prairie, the cress of the sheltered waters, the hum of
the first insect, the twitter from the mossy nest, the murmur of forest
streams, were all so many types of human rejuvenescence and animation.

There was besides a moral feature to the splendour of the season. The
dreary Lenten time was over, with its vigils and fasts, its
self-abasement and penitence. The dread Holy Week had gone, with its
plaints and laments, its confession of sins and cries for mercy, its
darkened windows and stripped altars, its quenched tapers and hushed
bells, its fourteen stations of that _Via Crucis_ which rehearses the
ineffable history of the Man of Sorrows and the Lady of Pain. The
glorious Easter morning was there. Bright vestments gleamed, a thousand
lights flamed from the sanctuary, perfumed incense circled heavenward,
bearing the thanksgiving of opening hearts. From hillside to valley
echoed the music of bells in every turret and steeple, even the bells of
the churches and convents in the old beleaguered town that had so often
sounded the alarm of battle during the night, taking on a new voice to
celebrate the "great day which the Lord hath made." And even as the
heavy stone was suddenly flung aside from the sepulchre under the shadow
of Golgotha, giving freedom to the Master of the world; so the pall of
winter was torn from the face of nature, and from the hearts of men was
removed the burden which, during four long months, had made their torpor
somewhat akin to that of the great beasts of the wilderness.

It was Easter Monday, a calmer day, but perhaps more enjoyable from the
palpable assurance it afforded that the promises of its predecessor were
really being fulfilled. The weather was magnificent, and th