Honeysuckle and ivy embraced and hid crumbling walls, broken foundations, mounds of brick and rubbish, all the untouched memorials of the last burning of the place.

Grass grew in the street, and the silent square was strewn with the gold of the buttercups.

The houses that yet stood and were lived in might have been counted on the fingers of one hand, with the thumb for the church.

But in their gardens the flowers bloomed gayly, and the sycamores and mulberries in the churchyard were haunts of song.

The dead below had music, and violets in the blowing grass, and the undertone of the river.