ad yielded to the impulse in their
blood. A brisk fluttering of snowflakes began falling from the sky still
blue, drifting away over our heads towards the blood-red flames and
smoke. They powdered the woman's hair and shoulders, and with a sob and
a laugh she held up her hand and began catching them as a child might.

"'Tis a funny day for my girl's weddin'," she said. Then with a sort of
fierceness added: "She'll never know her mother--she's in luck there,
tu!" And, grabbing her feathered hat from the ground, she got up. "I
must be gettin' back for my train, else I'll be late for an
appointment."

When she had put her hat on, rubbed her face, dusted and smoothed her
dress, she stood looking at the burning furze. Restored to her town
plumage, to her wonted bravado, she was more than ever like that old
discarded boot, incongruous.

"I'm a fool ever to have come," she said; "only upset me--and you don't
want no more upsettin' than you get, that's certain. Good-bye, and thank
you for the drink--it lusened my tongue praaper, didn't it?" She gave me
a look--not as a professional--but a human, puzzled look. "I told you my
baby was a laughin' little thing. I'm glad she's still like that. I'm
glad I've seen her." Her lips quivered for a second; then, with a faked
jauntiness, she nodded. "So long!" and passed through the gate down into
the lane.

I sat there in the snow and sunlight some minutes after she was gone.
Then, getting up, I went and stood by the burning furze. The blowing
flames and the blue smoke were alive and beautiful; but behind them they
were leaving blackened skeleton twigs.

"Yes," I thought, "but in a week or two the little green grass-shoots
will be pushing up underneath into the sun. So the world goes! Out of
destruction! It's a strange thing!"

1916.

V

TWO LOOKS

The old Director of the 'Yew Trees' Cemetery walked slowly across from
his house, to see that all was ready.

He had seen pass into the square of earth committed to his charge so
many to whom he had been in the habit of nodding, so many whose faces
even he had not known. To him it was the everyday event; yet this
funeral, one more in the countless tale, disturbed him--a sharp reminder
of the passage of time.

For twenty years had gone by since the death of Septimus Godwin, the
cynical, romantic doctor who had been his greatest friend; by whose
cleverness all had sworn, of whose powers of fascination all had
gossiped! And