Little Leonard cooed to the flowers, and stretched after their bright colours; and Ruth laid him on the dry turf, and pelted him with the gay petals.

He chinked and crowed with laughing delight, and clutched at her cap, and pulled it off.

Her short rich curls were golden-brown in the slanting sunlight, and by their very shortness made her look more child-like.

She hardly seemed as if she could be the mother of the noble babe over whom she knelt, now snatching kisses, now matching his cheek with rose-leaves.

All at once, the bells of the old church struck the hour; and far away, high up in the air, began slowly to play the old tune of "Life let us cherish;" they had played it for years--for the life of man--and it always sounded fresh and strange and aerial.