As they passed the door, the sun met them shining with all his
might. The sea, far away across the tops of hills and the clefts of
valleys, lay basking in his glory. The hot air quivered all over the
wide landscape. From the flight of steps in front of the church they
looked down on the streets of the town, and beyond them into space. It
looked the best of all possible worlds--as neither plague, famine,
pestilence, earthquakes, nor human wrongs, persuade me it is not,
judged by the high intent of its existence. When a man knows that
intent, as I dare to think I do, _then_ let him say, and not till
then, whether it be a good world or not. That in the midst of the
splendour of the sunny day, in the midst of olives and oranges, grapes
and figs, ripening swiftly by the fervour of the circumambient air,
should lie that charnel-church, is a terrible fact, neither to be
ignored, nor to be explained by the paltry theory of the greatest good
to the greatest number; but the end of the maker's dream is not this.

When they turned into the street that led to the gate, they found the
donkeys standing where they had left them. Their owner was not with
them. He had gone into the church with the rest, and was killed. When
they caught sight of the patient, dejected animals, unheeded and
unheeding, then first they spoke, whispering in the awful stillness of
the world: they must take the creatures, and make the best of their
way back without a guide! They judged that, as the road was chiefly
down hill, and the donkeys would be going home, they would not have
much difficulty with them. At the worst, short and stout as they were,
they were not bad walkers, and felt more than equal to carrying the
child between them. Not a person was in the street when they mounted;
almost all were in the church, at its strange, terrible service. Mrs.
Porson mounted the strongest of the animals, her husband placed the