The rule of the world is heavy and hard, Taketh of every life a share, Strive as it may to cherish and guard The dawning hope that was all so fair, And yet, so sure as the night-wind blows, Memory dwells in her place apart, And the savor of rue or the breath of a rose Brings peace out of trouble, dear heart, dear heart! There was never a joy that the world can kill So long as there lives a dream of the past, For the alchemist in his fragrant still Keeps fresh the dream to the very last. So sure as the wind of the morning blows To heal the trouble, to cool the smart, The breath of lavender, thyme and rose Will bring to thee comfort, dear heart, dear heart! [Illustration] X MARY LAVENDER'S GARDEN HOW MARY LAVENDER CAME TO BE OF SERVICE TO AN EXILED QUEEN Mary Lavender lived in a garden. That seems really the best way to say it. The house of Dame Annis Lavender was hardly more than four walls and a roof, a green door and two small hooded windows. Instead of the house having a garden the garden seemed rather to hold the cottage in a blossomy lap. A long time ago there had been a castle on the low hill above the cottage. It was a Saxon castle, roughly built of great half-hewn stones, its double walls partly of tramped earth. Nearly a century had passed since a Norman baron had received the "hundred" in which the castle stood, as a reward for having helped Duke William become William the Conqueror. His domain was large enough for a hundred families to live on, getting their living from the land. The original Saxon owner had fled to join Hereward at Ely, and he never came back. This rude Saxon castle was not what the Norman needed, at all. He must have, if he meant to be safe in this hostile land, a fortress much harder to take. He chose a taller hill just beyond the village, made it higher with most of the stone from the old castle, and built there a great square frowning keep and some smaller towers, with a double wall of stone, topped by battlements, round the brow of the hill, and a ditch around all. No stream being convenient to fill the moat he left it dry. Here, where the Saxon castle had been, was nothing but a dimpled green mound, starred over in spring with pink and white baby daisies, and besprinkled with dwarf buttercups and the little flower that English children call Blue Eyes. Mary liked to take her distaff there and spin. The old castle had been built to guard a ford. The Normans had made a stone bridge at a narrower and deeper point in the river, and Dame Annis and Mary washed linen in the pool above the ford.