The next day I returned to the tower. Raphael had died during the
night, and the village bell was already tolling for his burial. Women
and children were standing at their doors, looking mournfully in the
direction of the tower, and in the little green field adjoining the
church, two men, with spades and mattock, were digging a grave at the
foot of a cross.

I drew near to the door. A cloud of twittering swallows were fluttering
round the open windows, darting in and out, as though the spoiler had
robbed their nests.

Since then I have read these pages, and now know why he loved to be
surrounded by these birds, and what memories they waked in him, even to
his dying day.




RAPHAEL




I.


There are places and climates, seasons and hours, with their outward
circumstance, so much in harmony with certain impressions of the heart,
that Nature and the soul of man appear to be parts of one vast whole;
and if we separate the stage from the drama, or the drama from the