had once touched
the air with a fire that still warmed their cheeks in passing. Yonder
the look of a face was cut on the viewless air as on marble. Surely,
death does but touch the living, for the dead ever keep their power over
us: it is only we who lose ours over them. Each vista of leafy arch and
distant meadow framed in some scene of their youth-time, painted in the
imperishable hues of memory that borrow from time an ever-richer and
more glowing tint. It was no wonder that to these two old people,
sitting on the bench between the elms, the atmosphere before them,
saturated with associations, dense with memories, should seem fairly
quivering into material forms like a distant mist turning to rain.

At length Miss Rood heard her companion say, in a whisper of tremulous
exultation, "Do you know, Mary, I think I shall see them very soon."

"See whom?" she asked, frightened at his strange tone.

"Why, see us, of course, as I was telling you," he whispered--"you and
me as we were young--see them as I see you now. Don't you remember it
was just along here that we used to walk on spring evenings? We walk
here no more, but they do evermore, beautiful, beautiful children. I
come here often to lie in wait for them. I can feel them now: I can
almost, almost see them." His whisper became scarcely audible and the
words dropped slowly. "I know the sight is coming, for every day they
grow more vivid. It can't be long before I quite see them. It may come
at any moment."

Miss Rood was thoroughly frightened at the intensity of his excitement,
and terribly perplexed as to what she should do.

"It may come at any time: I can almost see them now," he murmured.
"A--h! look!" With parted lips and unspeakably intense eyes, as if his
life were flowing out at them, he was staring across the moonlit paths
before them to the point where the path debouched from the shadow.

Following his eyes, she saw what for a moment made her head swim with
the thought that she too was going mad. Just issuing from the shadows,
as if in answer to his words, were a young man and a girl, his arm upon
her waist, his eyes upon her face. At the first glance Miss Rood was
impressed with a resemblance to her own features in those of the girl,
which her excitement exaggerated to a perfect reproduction of them. For
an instant the conviction possessed her that by some impossible,
indescribable, inconceivable miracle she was looking upon the
resurrected figures of