ss so peculiar, so foreign to all common
experience that to inhale it were enough to make you fancy that
fairyland was blooming near, and fairy florists experimenting with their
plants in mortal soil.

The moment Bertha caught sight and scent of the flowers, there came,
first into her mind, a vivid image of Sprigg, as she had left him lying
at home, less like the living than the dead; and then, into her heart, a
feeling that they were blooming there to no other end than for his
restoration to life and health. Thus impressed--bespelled, it may
be--the little girl, instead of lingering about the spot as usual,
hastened to fill her apron with the offered good, stripping the bush to
its last blossom. Then, bringing the cattle together in the shortest
time the thing was ever done, without the help of a dog, she sent them
trotting homeward with all their awkward might, leaving the patriarch of
the herd, who was too stately or too stubborn to be stimulated out of a
dignified walk, to follow on or stay behind, as suited his sulky old
fancy best. Briskly had they started, more and more briskly on they
went, the grandmotherly cows hobbling along in that peculiar,
cross-legged trot, rather suggestive of rheumatism in the hocks and
hips, and which limber-legged little boys, who follow at their heels,
are mighty apt to mimic. Set were their big, mild eyes, all glassy with
amazement--the sun a mile too high for milking time, not a sign in the
sky to show for a coming thunder storm; not a yell, not a howl, not a
scream in the forest to tell of Indian, wolf or panther.

Arrived at home, Bertha turned the cows into the enclosure, where they
were wont to be milked and secured for the night. Then hastening on to
grandpap's house, she entered by a back door, which opened directly into
the sick room, and stealing quietly up to the bedside, began softly
strewing the fragrant contents of her apron, handful by handful, over
and around the form of the unconscious boy. Scarcely were the flowers
strewn, their perfume filling the room, when, slowly over the wan, young
face, which until this moment had worn the fixed and pallid cast of
death, came stealing a smile of solemn, innocent sweetness, such as we
often see on the faces of sleeping infants. Faint, it is true, was the
smile, yet perceptible enough to betoken that the spirit was still at
home, and only waiting for its doors to be reopened, when it would again
reveal itself as a living presen