each in a language which we cannot understand, but which we love to hear. Especially at eventide, when the heat of the day is softened by twilight shad[24]ows, and a gentle breeze comes wandering along, touching with fairy fingers the careworn face and tired hands.

[23]

[24]

The sun had sunk below the horizon. As I now directed my gaze to the western sky, one of those rarely beautiful phenomena which sometimes accompany sunset in early spring, was spread before me. Spanning the clear sky, stretching from western horizon to zenith, and from zenith to eastern horizon, was a narrow, filmy band of cloud. And by some subtle reflection of which we do not know, the whole had caught the golden sheen of the hidden sun, and glowed, pale gold and pink and saffron. The sky was clear but for this encircling cloud-band, and my fancy saw it as a ring girding the earth with celestial glory,—a fitting path for spirit feet when they tread the upward heights. I watched it pale, with upturned face, its changing tints in themselves a mira[25]cle, and thought of the wonders which lay beyond it, which we are taught to seek. Thought of what was on the other side of that steadily purpling curtain stretched above me which no human eye might pierce. Groves of peace and endless song and light which never paled; my mother's face—

[25]

A star blossomed out in the tranquil depths above me, white and pure as a thought of God; some dun-colored boats were drifting in an azure sea out in the west, and a whippoorwill's plaintive wail sounded through the dusk from adown the fence-row. Up from the still earth there floated to my nostrils the incense of a dew-drenched landscape,—fresh, odorous, wonderfully sweet,—and a fire-fly's zigzag lantern came travelling towards me across the darkening meadow. Everything had become very still. It was that magic hour when the voices of the things of[26] the day are hushed, and the things of the night have not yet awakened. Only at intervals the whippoorwill's call arose, like a pulse of pain. The voice of the ploughman in the adjoining field came no more to my ears; a respite from labor had come to both man and beast. The birds were still. There was no flutter of wings, no piping cry. The earth rested for a spell, and a solemn quietude stole over the scented fields.

[26]

I knew that I ought to be going—that I ought to have gone long ago, but still I sat on the topmost rail of the fence, which stretched away like a 

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