Stray Leaves from a Border Garden 
letters a text : “It is sown in corruption, it is raised in 
incorruption.” The grass grew long in the God’s-acre, and 
the Poppies and rosy Saxifrage flourished; it might have 
looked neglected but for the flowers. The golden Gentian 
grew there too, “ Candles for the Dead,” said little Reine- 
des-Cieux,” the sexton Leblanc’s orphan grand-daughter. 
She called the purple Campanulas Bells —Clochettes — and 
declared the angels rang them when any one was coming to 
his rest. She said falling stars meant passing souls, and 
she supposed more souls died in the Autumn, because this 
world was triste then. Over her head the infidel school- 
master murmured, “It is the month for suicides, Novem- 
ber ” ; and added, “ She is not all there, the petite .” She 
haunted old man Leblanc’s footsteps whenever he dug a 
grave, and always threw a bunch of sweet herbs in before 
the coffin took possession, never failing to put a bouquet 
on the mound afterwards. Her mother had been an 
Italian-Swiss, and Reine seemed to have inherited from her 
alien parentage a feeling for flower-decked resting-places, 
foreign to the Swiss of that northern valley. Reine’s 
parents were both dead ; her father had been a guide in the 
mountains and had fallen a victim to the insatiable passion 
of the stranger for Edelweiss, and his young wife had not 
lingered long after him. 
Reine was an odd-looking little mortal with dark eyes 
and yellow hair. She used to haunt the village inn during 
the short Summertime with tiny basketsful of Wood-straw- 
berries or Mountain-raspberries, and bouquets of delicate 
Pyrola and wild fringed Pinks, Gentians or blue Geraniums, 
which I used to buy from her. Then in the evening, when 
I wandered, as I often did, to the hillside slope above the 
cemetery to see the sun set, I would see the little red 
petticoat and white cap flitting about below me, and I 
would know that Reine was picking flowers “ for mother,” 
as she phrased it. Poor little Reine ! When I revisited 
the mountain- village some years later the little quiet inn 
had given place to a new-looking boarding-house, “Pension 
des Anglais — Villa Bellevue,” written over the green door in 
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