weeping.

Mrs. Singleton felt her own tears falling fast, but she played for a
while longer; then stole out of the chapel, and sat down on the steps.

Across the grass plot before the door, burnished pigeons cooed, and
trod their stately minuet, their iridescent plumage showing every
opaline splendor as the sunlight smote them; and on a buttress of the
clock tower, a lonely hedge-sparrow poured his heart out in that
peculiarly pathetic threnody which no other feathered throat
contributes to the varied volume of bird lays. Poised on the point of
an iron spike in the line that bristled along the wall, a mocking bird
preened, then spread his wings, soared and finally swept downward,
thrilling the air with the bravura of the "tumbling song"; and over the
rampart that shut out the world, drifted the refrain of a paean to
peace:

"Bob White!" "Peas ripe?" "Not quite!"

In the vast epic of the Cosmos, evoked when the "Spirit of God moved
upon the face of the waters"--an epic printed in stars on blue abysses
of illimitable space; in illuminated type of rose leaf, primrose petal,
scarlet berry on the great greenery of field and forest; in the
rainbows that glow on tropical humming birds, on Himalayan pheasants,
on dying dolphins in purple seas; and in all the riotous carnival of
color on Nature's palette, from shifting glory of summer clouds, to the
steady fires of red autumn skies--we find no blot, no break, no blurred
abortive passages, until man stepped into creation's story. In the
material, physical Universe, the divine rhythm flows on, majestic,
serene as when the "morning stars sing together" in the choral of
praise to Him, unto whom "all seemed good"; but in the moral and
spiritual realm evolved by humanity, what hideous pandemonium of
discords drowns the heavenly harmony? What grim havoc marks the swath,
when the dripping scythe of human sin and crime swings madly, where the
lilies of eternal "Peace on earth, good will to man," should lift their
silver chalices to meet the smile of God?

A vague conception of this vexing problem, which like a huge
carnivorous spectre, flaps its dusky wings along the sky of sociology,
now saddened Mrs. Singleton's meditations, as she watched the
lengthening shadow cast by the tower upon the court-yard; but she was
not addicted to abstract speculation, and the words of her favorite
hymn epitomized her thoughts: "Though every prospect pleases, and only
man is vile."

The brazen cla