Merry the hearts that sailed with him, and fresh the winds that wafted them onward, while, as is usual at sea, nothing occurred during the voyage worth mentioning an hour after its occurrence.  Jason in his new joy had almost forgotten that withered token.  In deep remorse at his thoughtlessness, he sought his treasure, and, horror of horrors! every leaf had fallen from the stem, the blossom was annihilated for ever.  He dwelt upon this episode morbidly, as upon a presentiment:  he pictured in his mind the hill-slope cottage deserted, the rose-garden wasted and full of tares, and the bleak wind blowing whither it listed through those avenues of beauty, for desolation possessed them all.  He groaned in spirit and wrestled with his new and invisible adversary, beseeching the Most Merciful, from the bitterness of his suspense, a speedy deliverance or a happy death.

III.

There were thistles and tares in the unkept rose-garden, and the cottage was abandoned to a sisterhood of doves, who mourned perpetually for their lost princess.  The place was desolate, yet there had been no sudden desertion of it.  For many months no news had been heard of the Argonauts.  They were considerably overdue:  the sages of Dreamland shook their grizzly heads.  They were just as sage and shaky in those days as in these degenerate times.  The maids of the hamlet wept for a season, then turned from sorrowing, dried their tears, took unto themselves new lovers, and the world wagged well in Dreamland.

But Maud was a truer soul than any amongst them:  she prayed hourly for Jason’s prosperity, and was trusting and hopeful until it seemed almost that something had whispered to her the fate of the voyagers.  Then she mourned night and day:  she went into retirement with the sweet-faced nuns at the headland, whose secluded life had ever been very grateful to her.  She gave out of her bounty to all who asked, and rested not then, but sought the sick and the suffering, and they were comforted, and blessed her who had blessed them.  They began to think her half an angel in Dreamland, and it seemed as though she were not made for this world at all.  The same thing happens now occasionally, and in this way we acknowledge our shortcomings before our fellow-men and women when we find some one considerably above the average who shames us into confessing it.  I hope the Recording Angel is within hearing at these precious moments.

The world certainly possessed no charms for one of Maud’s temperament:  it never did possess any for her.  She was as out of place in it as a mourning dove in a city mob.  Her spirit sought tranquillity, and she found it in the serene and changless convent life.  You and I might seek in vain for anything like peace of spirit in such a place:  we might find it a stale and profitless imprisonment; and perhaps it speaks badly for both of us that it is so.  The violet finds its silent cell in the