of pious service. Ah, to have her there in the room with
him now; to be able to turn his eyes to hers in the vanishing
firelight, near sleep awaiting them, side by side.

There was the sound of a scratching on David's window shutters, as
though a stiff brush were being moved up and down across the slats. He
became aware that this sound had reached him at intervals several times
already, but as often happens, had been disregarded by him owing to his
preoccupation. Now it was so loud as to force itself positively upon
his attention.

He listened, puzzled, wondering. His window stood high from the ground
and clear of any object. In a few moments, the sound made itself
audible again. He sprang up, wide awake now, and raising the sash,
pushed open the shutters--one of them easily; against the other there
was resistance from outside. This yielded before his pressure; and as
the shutter was forced wide open and David peered out, there swung
heavily against his cheek what felt like an enormous brush of thorns,
covered with ice. It was the end of one of the limbs of the cedar tree
which stood several feet from his window on one side, and close to the
wall of the house. Before David was born, it had been growing there, a
little higher, more far-reaching laterally, every year, until several
topmost boughs had long since risen above the level of the eaves and
dropped their dry needles on the rotting shingles. Now one of the
limbs, bent over sidewise under its ice-freighted berries and twigs,
hung as low as his window, and the wind was tossing it.

Sleet! This, then, was the nature of the threatening storm, which all
day had made man and beast foreboding and distressed. David held out
his hand: rain was falling steadily, each drop freezing on whatsoever
it fell, adding ice to ice. The moon rode high by this time; and its
radiance pouring from above on the roof of riftless cloud, diffused
enough light below to render large objects near at hand visible in bulk
and outline. A row of old cedars stretched across the yard. Their
shapes, so familiar to him, were already disordered. The sleet must
have been falling for hours to have weighed them down this way and
that. A peculiarity of the night was the wind, which increased
constantly, but with fitful violence, giving no warning of its high
swoop, seizure, and wrench.

Sleet! Scarce a winter but he had seen some little: once, in his
childhood, a great one. He had often heard his fathe