"Well, when the third day come, they said the funeral had to be, and they dug the grave in the family buryin'-ground and cut branches of cedar and pine and lined it so you couldn't see the frozen earth anywhere, and they covered the coffin with ivy off the walls o' the old house. It was one o' these clear, sunshiny winter days, when the sky's soft and blue jest like it is in May or June, but the air was bitter cold, and there was a crust of ice on top o' the snow and the frozen ground under it. Hamilton had got kind o' quiet by this time, and he was so weak from loss o' sleep and not eatin' anything that they thought they wouldn't have any more trouble, but when they let the coffin down into the ground and the first clod fell on it, it took the strength of three men to keep Hamilton from throwin' himself into the grave." Alas, the sad, sad story, beginning with love and spring and youth, and ending beside an open grave under wintry skies! Aunt Jane was wiping her glasses, and my tears were flowing fast. "Death has mighty few terrors when it comes at the right time, honey," said Aunt Jane tremulously. "You know the Bible says 'We all do fade as a leaf; and when a person's lived out his app'inted time, three score years and ten, or maybe four score, why, his death is jest like the fallin' of a leaf. It's had its spring and its summer, and it's nothin' to cry about when the frost comes and touches it, and it falls to the ground to make room for the new leaves that'll come next spring. But jest suppose that the leaves fell as soon as the trees got green and pretty in the springtime, and suppose all the roses died in the bud. Wouldn't this be a sorrowful world, if things was that way? There ain't any bitterness in the tears that's shed over old folks' coffins, but when I think o' Miss Amaryllis dyin' the way she did, before she'd lived her life and had the happiness she ought to 'a' had, I feel like questionin' the ways o' Providence. And then, again, I think maybe she had as much happiness in that one year as most folks has in a lifetime. It ain't often a man loves a woman so much that he can't live without her, but that's the way Hamilton Schuyler loved Miss Amaryllis, and that's the main reason why I ricollect her so well after all these years. Her hair and her eyes would keep me from forgittin' her outright, and when I think of how she looked and how Hamilton Schuyler loved her, it seems like she was different from all the other women that ever I've known." "Dust and ashes! Dust and ashes!" sings the poet; but "Love and beauty! Love and beauty!" answers the soul. And thus, doubly immortalized, and radiant as when she played with the hearts of men in her golden youth, this maiden more beautiful than her name shall live in the tale I tell as it was told to me.