There, besides the peculiarities of present life, they saw tokens of the life that had long ago been lived and flung aside.

The little town, such as we see in our mind's eye, would have its gate and its surrounding walls, so ancient and massive that ages had not sufficed to crumble them away; but in the lofty upper portion of the gateway, still standing over the empty arch, where there was no longer a gate to shut, there would be a dove-cote, and peaceful doves for the only warders.

Pumpkins lay ripening in the open chambers of the structure.

Then, as for the town wall, on the outside an orchard extends peacefully along its base, full, not of apple-trees, but of those old humorists with gnarled trunks and twisted boughs, the olives.

Houses have been built upon the ramparts, or burrowed out of their ponderous foundation.