* * * * * The sun is saying good-morning to the moon; she is wan from watching. The birds are awake, but the man still sleeps; and the little red-gowned figure crouched at the bed-side, her left hand, with its heavy gold band, clasped lightly in his, is sleeping too. A half-dried tear is held in the dark hollow under the closed eyes; the nose looks pinched in the morning light, and a gray-green shadow stains mouth and chin, but a smile plays round the dry lips. The caravan is winding slowly round the curve of the road, and three plump geese are stowed inside. The Romany lass is humming a song,--a song about love and dance and song,--and the soul of the sleeping girl floats along at her side in a dream of freedom. She of the song looks up: "Six moons will rise, then you will be free!" she mutters to herself as she passes on; and the sun mounts higher, and the shadow of the cross is lightening with the coming dawn--who knows? III. AN EBB TIDE. On right and left with flight of light, How whirled the hills, the trees, the bowers! With light-like flight, on left and right, How spun the hamlets, towns, and towers! Dost quail? The moon is fair to see; Hurrah! the Dead ride recklessly! Beloved! Dost dread the shrouded dead? "Ah, let the dead repose!" she said. JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN: _Anthology_. It is a sunshine Sabbath morning. The sea quivers under an armor of silver scales, and laps, laps with a laugh as it runs into the creek. The sails of the ships glisten whiter than any snow. The sun distils the scent from the clove carnations and the sweetbrier leaves, and coaxes the pungent resin through the cracks in the bark, until the air is heavy with a smell that would cease to be perfume, were it not filtered through the salt ooze of the incoming sea-breeze that flutters the flags on the tall white poles, and tempers the ardor of the young year's sun. The kariol bearing the specialist whose skill is of no avail in the face of a pressing call from the great god Death, has just wound round the pine-wood in a whirl of dust. The dogs, unbound, lie on the back veranda, with their black snouts resting on their forepaws, and they watch him depart without a growl; they have not barked for days past, nor chased the plucky badger, nor yapped impatiently as the cheeky squirrels flirted through the branches. Even beggars have come and gone without a snarling protest; but all last night they howled and bayed and cowered together as if they could see the passage of invisible guests. A peculiar stillness seems to brood over the great place. The maids are sitting in their gowns of Sunday black, with open psalm-books on their laps; they are listening and whispering with the disturbance of expectancy.