reath rose as a steam before his face.
Beyond the woods he crossed a field; then a forest of many acres and
magnificent timber, on the far edge of which, under the forest trees
and fronting a country lane, stood the schoolhouse of the district.
David looked anxiously, as he drew near, for any signs of injury that
the storm might have done. One enormous tree-top had fallen on the
fence. A limb had dropped sheer on the steps. The entire yard was
little better than a brush heap. He soon turned away home relieved: he
would be able to tell Gabriella to-night that none of the windows had
been broken nor the roof; only a new woods scholar, with little feet
and a big hard head and a bunch of mistletoe in one hand, was standing
on the steps, waiting for her to open the door.

David's college experience had effected the first great change in him
as he passed from youth to manhood; Gabriella had wrought the second.
The former was a fragment of the drama of man's soul with God; the
latter was the drama of his heart with woman.

It had begun the day the former ended--in the gloom of that winter
twilight day, when he had quit the college after his final interview
with the faculty, and had wandered forlorn and dazed into the happy
town, just commencing to celebrate its season of peace on earth and
good will to man. He had found her given up heart and soul to the work
of decorating the church of her faith, the church of her fathers.

When David met her the second time, it was a few days after his return
home. He was at work in the smoke-house. The meat had been salted down
long enough after the killing: it must be hung, and he was engaged in
hanging it. Several pieces lay piled inside the door suitably for the
hand. He stood with his back to these beside the meat bench, scraping
the saltpetre off a large middling and rubbing it with red pepper.
Suddenly the light of the small doorway failed; and turning he beheld
his mother, and a few feet behind her--David said that he did not
believe in miracles--but a few feet behind his mother there now stood a
divine presence. Believe it or not, there she was, the miracle! All the
bashfulness of his lifetime--it had often made existence well-nigh
insupportable--came crowding into that one moment. The feeblest little
bleat of a spring lamb too weak to stand up for the first time would
have been a deafening roar in comparison with the silence which now
penetrated to the marrow of his bones. He fac