“She seemed a thing that could not feel
        The touch of earthly years.”

    “No motion has she now—­no force;
       She neither hears nor sees;
     Rolled round in earth’s diurnal course,
       With rocks and stones and trees.”

They went home again, the six of them, and Esther, who, all her days, “would go the softlier, sadlier” because of the price that had been paid for the life of her little sweet son.  The very air of Yarrahappini seemed to crush them and hang heavy on their souls.

So when the Captain, who had hurried up to see the last of his poor little girl, asked if they would like to go home, they all said “Yes.”

There was a green space of ground on a hill-top behind the cottage, and a clump of wattle trees, dark-green now, but gold-crowned and gracious in the spring.

This is where they left little Judy.  All around it Mr. Hassal had white tall palings put; the short grave was in the shady corner of it.

The place looked like a tiny churchyard in a children’s country where there had only been one death.

Or a green fair field, with one little garden bed.

Meg was glad the little mound looked to the east; the suns died behind it—­the orange and yellow and purple suns she could not bear to watch ever again while she lived.

But away in the east they rose tenderly always, and the light crept up across the sky to the hill-top in delicate pinks and trembling blues and brightening greys, but never fiery, yellow streaks, that made the eyes ache with hot tears.

There was a moon making it white and beautiful when they said good-bye to it on the last day.

They plucked a blade or two of grass each from the fresh turfs, and turned away.  Nobody cried; the white stillness of the far moon, the pale, hanging stars, the faint wind stirring the wattles; held back their tears till they had closed the little gate behind them and left her alone on the quiet hill-top.  Then they went-back to Misrule, each to pickup the thread of life and go on with the weaving that, thank God, must be done, or hearts would break every day.

Meg had grown older; she would never be quite so young again as she had been before that red sunset sank into her soul.

There was a deeper light in her eyes; such tears as she had wept clear the sight till life becomes a thing more distinct and far-reaching.

Nellie and she went to church the first Sunday after their return.  Aldith was a few pews away, light-souled as ever, dressed in gay attire, flashing smiling, coquettish glances across to the Courtneys’ pew, and the Grahams sitting just behind.

How far away Meg had grown from her!  It seemed years since she had been engrossed with the latest mode in hat trimming, the dip of “umbrella” skirts, and the best method of making the hands white.  Years since she had tried a trembling ’prentice hand at flirtations.  Years, almost, since she had given the little blue ribbon at Yarrahappini, that was doing more good than she dreamed of.