Nature repairs her ravages,--repairs them with her sunshine, and with human labor. The desolation wrought by that flood had left little visible trace on the face of the earth, five years after. The fifth autumn was rich in golden cornstacks, rising in thick clusters among the distant hedgerows; the wharves and warehouses on the Floss were busy again, with echoes of eager voices, with hopeful lading and unlading. And every man and woman mentioned in this history was still living, except those whose end we know. Nature repairs her ravages, but not all. The uptorn trees are not rooted again; the parted hills are left scarred; if there is a new growth, the trees are not the same as the old, and the hills underneath their green vesture bear the marks of the past rending. To the eyes that have dwelt on the past, there is no thorough repair. Dorlcote Mill was rebuilt. And Dorlcote church-yard--where the brick grave that held a father whom we know, was found with the stone laid prostrate upon it after the flood--had recovered all its grassy order and decent quiet. Near that brick grave there was a tomb erected, very soon after the flood, for two bodies that were found in close embrace; and it was visited at different moments by two men who both felt that their keenest joy and keenest sorrow were forever buried there. One of them visited the tomb again with a sweet face beside him; but that was years after. The other was always solitary. His great companionship was among the trees of the Red Deeps, where the buried joy seemed still to hover, like a revisiting spirit. The tomb bore the names of Tom and Maggie Tulliver, and below the names it was written:-- "In their death they were not divided." THE VILLAGE WORTHIES From 'Silas Marner' The conversation, which was at a high pitch of animation when Silas approached the door of the Rainbow, had as usual been slow and intermittent when the company first assembled. The pipes began to be puffed in a silence which had an air of severity; the more important customers, who drank spirits and sat nearest the fire, staring at each other as if a bet were depending on the first man who winked; while the beer-drinkers, chiefly men in fustian jackets and smock-frocks, kept their eyelids down and rubbed their hands across their mouths, as if their draughts of beer were a funeral duty attended with embarrassing sadness. At last Mr. Snell, the landlord, a man of a neutral disposition, accustomed to stand aloof from human differences as those of beings who were all alike in need of liquor, broke silence by saying in a doubtful tone to his cousin the butcher:-- "Some folks 'ud say that was a fine beast you druv in yesterday, Bob?" The butcher, a jolly, smiling, red-haired man, was not disposed to answer rashly. He gave a few puffs before he spat, and replied, "And they wouldn't be fur wrong, John." After this feeble delusive thaw, the silence set in as severely as before.