de of an English wood. The soil was the same
brown clay that you see in the south Of England above the downs and
the chalk; the wood was a hazel wood, such as grow in England,
thinned a good deal, as English hazels are, but with several tall
trees still growing; and plants were there and late flowers, such as
grow in Surrey and Kent. And at the end of the valley, just in the
shadow of that familiar homely wood, a hundred British officers rest
for ever.

As the world is today perhaps that obscure spot, as fittingly as any,
might be named the Happy Valley.

In Bethune

Under all ruins is history, as every tourist knows. Indeed, the dust
that gathers above the ruin of cities may be said to be the cover of
the most wonderful of the picture-books of Time, those secret books
into which we sometimes peep. We turn no more, perhaps, than the
corner of a single page in our prying, but we catch a glimpse there
of things so gorgeous, in the book that we are not meant to see, that
it is worth while to travel to far countries, whoever can, to see one
of those books, and where the edges are turned up a little to catch
sight of those strange winged bulls and mysterious kings and
lion-headed gods that were not meant for us. And out of the glimpses,
one catches from odd comers of those volumes of Time, where old
centuries hide, one builds up part by guesses, part by fancy mixed
with but little knowledge, a tale or theory of how men and women
lived in unknown ages in the faith of forgotten gods.

Such a people lived in Timgad and left it probably about the time
that waning Rome began to call home her outposts. Long after the
citizens left the city stood on that high plateau in Africa, teaching
shepherd Arabs what Rome had been: even to-day its great arches and
parts of its temples stand: its paved streets are still grooved
clearly with the wheel-ruts of chariots, and beaten down on each side
of the centre by the pairs of horses that drew them two thousand
years ago. When all the clatter had died away Timgad stood there in
silence.

At Pompeii, city and citizens ended together. Pompeii did not mourn
among strangers, a city without a people: but was buried at once,
closed like an ancient book.

I doubt if anyone knows why its gods deserted Luxor, or Luxor lost
faith in its gods, or in itself; conquest from over the desert or
down the Nile, I suppose, or corruption within. Who knows? But one
day I saw a woman come out from t