ping eaves. Amid the blur of green, and dimly, she
saw familiar faces and heard voices as if they came from far across the
fields, and Edmond was holding her. Her dead Edmond; her living Edmond,
and she felt the beating of his heart against her and the agonizing
rapture of his kisses striving to awake her. It was as if the spirit of
life and the awakening spring had given back the soul to her youth and
bade her rejoice.

It was many hours later that Octavie drew the locket from her bosom and
looked at Edmond with a questioning appeal in her glance.

"It was the night before an engagement," he said. "In the hurry of the
encounter, and the retreat next day, I never missed it till the fight
was over. I thought of course I had lost it in the heat of the struggle,
but it was stolen."

"Stolen," she shuddered, and thought of the dead soldier with his face
uplifted to the sky in an agony of supplication.

Edmond said nothing; but he thought of his messmate; the one who had
lain far back in the shadow; the one who had said nothing.

A REFLECTION

Some people are born with a vital and responsive energy. It not only
enables them to keep abreast of the times; it qualifies them to furnish
in their own personality a good bit of the motive power to the mad
pace. They are fortunate beings. They do not need to apprehend the
significance of things. They do not grow weary nor miss step, nor do
they fall out of rank and sink by the wayside to be left contemplating
the moving procession.

Ah! that moving procession that has left me by the road-side! Its
fantastic colors are more brilliant and beautiful than the sun on the
undulating waters. What matter if souls and bodies are failing beneath
the feet of the ever-pressing multitude! It moves with the majestic
rhythm of the spheres. Its discordant clashes sweep upward in one
harmonious tone that blends with the music of other worlds--to complete
God's orchestra.

It is greater than the stars--that moving procession of human energy;
greater than the palpitating earth and the things growing thereon. Oh!
I could weep at being left by the wayside; left with the grass and the
clouds and a few dumb animals. True, I feel at home in the society of
these symbols of life's immutability. In the procession I should
feel the crushing feet, the clashing discords, the ruthless hands and
stifling breath. I could not hear the rhythm of the march.

Salve! ye dumb hearts. Let us be still a