o run a
journal in a beleaguered town.

They sat in silence: John puffing away at his pipe, and Jess, her
work--one of his socks--lying idly upon her knees, her hands clasped
over it, and her eyes fixed upon the lights and shadows that played with
broad fingers upon the wooded slopes beyond.

So silently did they sit that a great green lizard came and basked
himself in the sun within a yard of them, and a beautiful striped
butterfly perched deliberately upon the purple grapes! It was a
delightful day and a delightful spot. They were too far from the camp to
be disturbed by its rude noise, and the only sounds that reached their
ears were the rippling of running water and the whispers of the wind,
odorous with the breath of mimosa blooms, as it stirred the stiff grey
leaves on the blue gums.

They were seated in the shade of the little house that Jess had learned
to love as she had never loved a spot before, but around them lay the
flood of sunshine shimmering like golden water; and beyond the red line
of the fence at the end of the garden, where the rich pomegranate bloom
tried to blush the roses down, the hot air danced merrily above the
rough stone wall like a million microscopic elves at play. Peace!
everywhere was peace! and in it the full heart of Nature beat out in
radiant life. Peace in the voice of the turtle-doves among the willows!
peace in the play of the sunshine and the murmur of the wind! peace
in the growing flowers and hovering butterfly! Jess looked out at the
wealth and glory which were spread before her, and thought that it was
like heaven; then, giving way to the melancholy strain in her nature,
she began to wonder idly how many human beings had sat and thought the
same things, and had been gathered up into the azure of the past and
forgotten; and how many would sit and think there when she in her turn
had been utterly swept away into that gulf whence no echo ever comes!
But what did it matter? The sunshine would still flood the earth with
gold, the water would ripple, and the butterflies hover; and there would
be other women to sit and fold their hands and consider them, thinking
the same identical thoughts, beyond which our human intelligence cannot
travel. And so on for thousands upon thousands of centuries, till at
last the old world reaches its journey's appointed end, and, passing
from the starry spaces, is swallowed up with those it bore.

And she--where would she be? Would she still live o