The day had been clear, though cold, and late in the afternoon Beulah wrapped a shawl about her, and ran out into the front yard for a walk. The rippling tones of the fountain were hushed; the shrubs were bare, and, outside the greenhouse, not a flower was to be seen. Even the hardy chrysanthemums were brown and shriveled. Here vegetation slumbered in the grave of winter. The hedges were green, and occasional clumps of cassina bent their branches beneath the weight of coral fruitage. Tall poplars lifted their leafless arms helplessly toward the sky, and threw grotesque shadows on the ground beneath, while the wintry wind chanted a mournful dirge through the somber foliage of the aged, solemn cedars. Noisy flocks of robins fluttered among the trees, eating the ripe, red yaupon berries, and now and then parties of pigeons circled round and round the house. Charon lay on the doorstep, blinking at the setting sun, with his sage face dropped on his paws. Afar off was heard the hum of the city; but here all was quiet and peaceful. Beulah looked over the beds, lately so brilliant and fragrant in their wealth of floral beauty; at the bare gray poplars, whose musical rustling had so often hushed her to sleep in cloudless summer nights, and an expression of serious thoughtfulness settled on her face. Many months before she had watched the opening spring in this same garden. Had seen young leaves and delicate blossoms bud out from naked stems, had noted their rich luxuriance as the summer heat came on--their mature beauty; and when the first breath of autumn sighed through the land she saw them flush and decline, and gradually die and rustle down to their graves. Now, where green boughs and perfumed petals had gayly looked up in the sunlight, all was desolate. The piercing northern wind seemed to whisper as it passed, "Life is but the germ of death, and death the development of a higher life." Was the cycle eternal then? Were the beautiful ephemeras she had loved so dearly gone down into the night of death, but for a season, to be born again, in some distant springtime, mature, and return, as before, to the charnel-house? Were the threescore and ten years of human life analogous? Life, too, had its springtime, its summer of maturity, its autumnal decline, and its wintry night of death. Were the cold sleepers in the neighboring cemetery waiting, like those dead flowers, for the tireless processes of nature, whereby their dust was to be reanimated, remolded, lighted with a soul, and set forward for another journey of threescore and ten years of life and labor? Men lived and died; their ashes enriched Mother Earth; new creations sprang, phoenix- like, from the sepulcher of the old. Another generation trod life's path in the dim footprints of their predecessors, and that, too, vanished in the appointed process, mingling dust with dust, that Protean matter might hold the even tenor of its way, in accordance with the oracular decrees of Isis.