nd dying one after the other for
want of his help, was the dread of Paulett. They stood in the cavern,
and embraced each other silently, and blessed their children with the
same prayer for the last time. The little ones received and returned his
caress, and Paulett quitted the cavern and set out on his uncertain
expedition.

The face of the country was so much changed that he had some difficulty
in making his way. The vivid colours of the earth were all gone, and in
place of them was the painful greyness of the dead trees, and the yellow
of the parched soil. Nothing was overthrown in ruin, but all stood dead
in its place. The shapes of men and animals only lay strewn upon the
earth. The human beings were comparatively rare; they were the last
survivors of the destroying drought whom there had been none to bury;
but these at length had died by hundreds, and in places their bones were
seen whiter than any other object; or if any where over the surface
there hung a vapour, it came from some collection of dead bodies which
had not yet been resolved into the elements. Those whom he found there
were mostly in heaps--the beasts had died singly; near what had been
water-courses he saw more than once signs of struggle, and the last
battles of earth had been fought for possession of its waters. He traced
out many a pathetic story among the dry bones and faded garments.
Women's dresses were there; and fallen into a shapeless heap on what had
been their bosom, were little forms, and the raiment of children. Where
the dry air and the sun had preserved the face, he beheld the fallen
estate of those who had been men in the uncovered shame of death; the
wide open lips, the sunken eyes, over which the eyelid was undrawn, the
swollen tongue, the frame writhed into an expression of anguish,
revealed all the pain and shame of death. But here and there, the hand
of some one who had been a survivor, was visible in the attempt to
conceal all this. In one place there was a shallow grave, into which a
body had been rolled, and lay on its side; and close by, on a heap of
clothes, out of which bones appeared, there was a spade with which the
unfinished work had been attempted. In another, a female body was
covered from sun and moon by a man's cloak; and a few paces off lay a
man, whom nothing shielded. There was an infant's skeleton wrapped in a
woman's shawl, under what had been a hawthorn hedge; the mother had
either perished attempting to find