oothing the wind-roughened surfaces, and inwrapping all things
in an uncertain light and a measureless peace. She lay there very
quiet--for all her troubles, still a very pretty bride. And on the
other side of the bolted door the gallant bridegroom, from his temporary
couch, snored peacefully.

A week before Christmas Day, 1870, the little town of Genoa, in the
State of New York, exhibited, perhaps more strongly than at any
other time, the bitter irony of its founders and sponsors. A driving
snow-storm, that had whitened every windward hedge, bush, wall, and
telegraph-pole, played around this soft Italian Capitol, whirled in and
out of the great staring wooden Doric columns of its post-office
and hotel, beat upon the cold green shutters of its best houses, and
powdered the angular, stiff, dark figures in its streets. From the
level of the street, the four principal churches of the town stood out
starkly, even while their misshapen spires were kindly hidden in the
low, driving storm. Near the railroad-station, the new Methodist chapel,
whose resemblance to an enormous locomotive was further heightened by
the addition of a pyramidal row of front-steps, like a cowcatcher, stood
as if waiting for a few more houses to be hitched on to proceed to a
pleasanter location. But the pride of Genoa--the great Crammer Institute
for Young Ladies--stretched its bare brick length, and reared its cupola
plainly from the bleak Parnassian hill above the principal avenue. There
was no evasion in the Crammer Institute of the fact that it was a public
institution. A visitor upon its doorsteps, a pretty face at its window,
were clearly visible all over the township.

The shriek of the engine of the four-o'clock Northern express brought
but few of the usual loungers to the depot. Only a single passenger
alighted, and was driven away in the solitary waiting sleigh toward the
Genoa Hotel. And then the train sped away again, with that
passionless indifference to human sympathies or curiosity peculiar
to express-trains; the one baggage-truck was wheeled into the station
again; the station-door was locked; and the station-master went home.

The locomotive-whistle, however, awakened the guilty consciousness
of three young ladies of the Crammer Institute, who were even
then surreptitiously regaling themselves in the bake-shop and
confectionery-saloon of Mistress Phillips in a by-lane. For even the
admirable regulations of the Institute failed to e