evermore "with
something of an angel light." For it is not battles that drench the
earth with the blood of her sons, but these unchronicled victories of
the spirit that lift man from the clod to the star and make him even
greater than the angels.

VIII

IN WAR TIME

[Illustration]

VIII

IN WAR TIME

The sun that morning had touched the gold of the daffodils with
promise of a clear day; but before it was half way to its meridian
hour, the air grew chill, the wind veered suddenly to the northeast,
the sky darkened angrily, and out of the clouds, like white petals
from some celestial orchard, came a flurry of great, soft snow flakes
that rested for a moment on the young grass and the golden daffodils
and then dissolved into a gentle dew, to be gathered again into the
chalice of the air and given back to the earth as an April shower.

There was a strange, bewildering beauty in the scene. The tender,
delicate foliage of early spring was on every bough, the long wands of
peach trees were pink with bloom, daffodils and hyacinths sprang at
our feet, and we looked at leaf and flower through a storm of snow
flakes that ceased as suddenly as it had begun, and with a brightening
sky and a warmer wind it was April again.

Aunt Jane drew a long breath of delight.

"Well, child," she said, "there's always somethin' new to be seen in
this world of ours. Old as I am, I never did see exactly such a sight
as this, and maybe it'll be a life time as long as mine before anybody
sees it again. Such big, soft lookin' flakes o' snow! It looks like
they'd be warm if you touched 'em, and fallin' all over the flowers
and young grass. Why, it's the prettiest sight I ever did see." And,
with a lingering look at the sky and the earth, Aunt Jane turned away
and went back to the work of cleaning out a closet in the front room,
a task preliminary to the spring cleaning that was to come a little
later. There was a pile of boxes and bundles on the floor, and she was
drawing strange things from the depth of the closet.

"Some o' these days," she remarked, "there'll be a house-cleanin' in
this house, and I won't be here. I'll be lyin' out in the old buryin'
ground along-side of Abram; and my children and grandchildren, they'll
be goin' through the closet and the bureau drawers like I'm doin'
to-day, and every time I clean house, thinks I to myself: 'I'll make
their work jest as light as I can;' so I git rid of all the rubbish,