trees. It was a
warm enough day too, and those same leaves were making a great spring
towards their full unfolding. Birds were twittering all around, and
they only filled up the silence.

"Isn't it worth coming for!--" said Faith, when they had taken it all
in for a few minutes without interrupting the birds.

"More than that--and the 'it' is very plural. Faith, do you see that
butterfly?"--A primrose-winged rover was meandering about in the soft
air before them, flitting over the buttercups with a listless sort of
admiration.

"Poor thing, he has come out too soon," said Faith. "He will have some
frost yet, for so summery as it is to-day." But Faith gave a graver
look at the butterfly than his yellow wings altogether warranted.

"Among the ancients," said Mr. Linden, "the word for a butterfly and
the word for the soul were the same,--they thought the first was a good
emblem of the lightness and airiness of the last. So they held, that
when a man died a butterfly might be seen flitting above his head. I
was thinking how well this one little thing shews the exceeding lowness
of heathen ideas."

"Did they think the butterfly was his very spirit, in that form?"

"I suppose so--or thought they did. But look at that creature's
wavering, unsteady flight; his aimless wanderings, anywhere or nowhere;
and compare it with the 'mounting up with wings as eagles', which a
Christian soul may know, even in this life,--compare it with the swift
'return to God who gave it'--with the being 'caught up to meet the
Lord' which it shall surely know at death."

"And the butterfly isn't further from that," said Faith clasping her
hands together,--"than many a real, living soul in many a living
person!"--

"No, not further; and so what the old Greeks made an emblem of the
immortal soul, gives name, with us, to those persons who are most tied
down to mortality. What were you thinking of, a minute ago, when I
shewed you the butterfly?"

"I was thinking of somebody that I am afraid a butterfly will always
remind me of,"--Faith answered with a slight colour;--"and of the time
he got the name."

"He got it by favour of his office, you know--not otherwise."

"I know--"

But with that, Faith jumped up to see to the state of the fire; and
then after some conjuration in her basket produced a suspicious-looking
tin vessel, for which the proper bed of coals was found. Leaving it and
the fire to agree together, Faith came back to the rock