w seem as 'tis fitter like fer him to
lie i' tha fresh free woods, wi' tha birds a' chirmin' abuve him, an' a'
tha forest things as he minded a flyin', an' nestin', an' runnin', an'
rejoicin' arount him. 'Tis allus so still there, an' peacefu'. 'Tis blue
and blue now, wi' tha hy'cinths; and there's one bonnie mavis as dew
make her home wi' each spring abuve the gravestone. 'Bout not meetin'
his God, I dunno--I darena saw nowt anent it--but, for sure, it dew seem
to me that we canna meet Him no better, nor fairer, than wi' lips that
ha ne'er lied to man nor to woman, and wi' hands as niver hae harmed the
poor dumb beasts nor the prattlin' birds. It dew seem so. I canna tell."

As the words died off his lips the sun fell yet more brightly through
the avenues of the straight, dark, odorous pines; sweet silent winds
swept up the dewy scents of mosses, and of leaves, and of wild
hyacinths; and on the stillness of that lonely place there came one
tremulous, tender sound. It was the sound of the mavis singing.

"I canna tell; but for sure it is well with him?" said Ambrose; and he
bared his head, and bowed it humbly, as though in the voice of the mavis
he heard the answer of God:

"It is well."

Ah! I trust that it may be so for you; that the sweetness of your
arrogant dreams of an unshared eternity be not wholly a delusion; that
for you--although to us you do deny it--there may be found pity,
atonement, compensation, in some great Hereafter.

* * *

"I have heard a very great many men and women call the crows carrion
birds, and the jackals carrion beasts, with an infinite deal of disgust
and much fine horror at what they were pleased to term 'feasting on
corpses;' but I never yet heard any of them admit their own appetite for
the rotten 'corpse' of a pheasant, or the putrid haunch of a deer, to be
anything except the choice taste of an epicure!"

"But they do cook the corpses!" I remonstrated; whereupon she grinned
with more meaning than ever.

"Exactly what I am saying, my dear. Their love of synonyms has made them
forget that they are _carnivori_, because they talk so sweetly of the
_cuisine_. A poor, blundering, honest, ignorant lion only kills and eats
when the famine of his body forces him to obey that law of slaughter
which is imposed on all created things, from the oyster to the man, by
what we are told is the beautiful and beneficent economy of Creation. Of
course, the lion is a brutal and