but June and love a nearer fact--a thing
closer to their youth.

Then around the turn came the procession which they awaited--a hearse,
followed by several buck-boards and buggies.

At the open gate it halted and the pall-bearers lifted down the casket
from its place, and bore it to the spot which had been prepared for its
reception. There were no formal designs from the shop of any florist,
but from every neighborhood garden had come contributions out of that
wealth which this golden month was squandering in blossom. Roses and
peonies and a brave display of those varied flowers that go in rows
about old-fashioned gardens had been gathered and brought by
sympathetic hands.

But it was chiefly upon the woman who came here to bury the last of her
dead that the bared heads turned eyes of reverent interest. At her side
walked a young farmer, whose tanned face and curling hair and
straight-gazing gray eyes proclaimed a robust and simple manhood.

The girl herself was well worth looking at, even had she not claimed
interest by reason of her bereavement. She walked straight and lithe and
upright with the free grace of some wild thing, as though she shared
with the deer which had looked across the lake the untrammeled strength
of the hills. She was slender, but the fine lines of her figure were
rounded to the fullness of perfect health, and the color of her cheeks,
though now paler than their wont, was like that of delicate rose-leaves,
and her lips were the curved petals of a deeper blossom. Her hair, under
a black mourning hat, tangled in the meshes of its heavy coils the glint
of sunlight on amber and brightened now and then into a hint of
burnished copper, but the features which must have challenged the gaze
of any observer not dead to a sense of color and beauty were the
marvelous and mismated eyes. One was a rich brown like illuminated agate
with a fleck or two of jet across the iris, while its twin was of a
colorful violet and deeply vivid. Now, of course, the heavy lashes were
wet with tears, but the gorgeous beauty of the eyes was not dimmed.

She stood there by the open grave and the masses of simple flowers, with
summer and June and green hills and blue skies at her back; and, of all
their loveliness, she might have been a living impersonation.

The preacher whose duty it was to give a rendering of the burial rites
had grown old in this pastorate, and to him all these people were his
children. He had been with