.

"I must say," remarked Mrs. White, "that it looks very queer. Where did
she pick up Old Man Wheeler? Who ever heard of his being seen walking with
a woman before? Even as a young man, he never would have any thing to do
with them; and it was always a marvel how he got married. I used to know
him very well."

"But, mother," urged Stephen, "for all we know, they may be relations or
old friends of his. You forget that we know literally nothing about these
people. So far from being queer, it may be the most natural thing in the
world that he should be helping her fit up her house."

But in his heart Stephen thought, as his mother did, that it was very
queer.

Chapter VI.

The beautiful white New England winter had set in. As far as the eye could
reach, nothing but white could be seen. The boundary, lines of stone walls
and fences were gone, or were indicated only by raised and rounded lines
of the same soft white. On one side of these were faintly pencilled dark
shadows in the morning and in the afternoon; but at high noon the fields
were as unbroken a white as ever Arctic explorer saw, and the roads shone
in the sun like white satin ribbons flung out in all directions. The
groves of maple and hickory and beech were bare. Their delicate gray tints
spread in masses over the hillsides like a transparent, gray veil, through
which every outline of the hills was clear, but softened. The massive
pines and spruces looked almost black against the white of the snow, and
the whole landscape was at once shining and sombre; an effect which is
peculiar to the New England winter in the hill country, and is always
either very depressing or very stimulating to the soul. Dreamy and inert
and phlegmatic people shiver and huddle, see only the sombreness, and find
the winter one long imprisonment in the dark. But to a joyous, brisk,
sanguine soul, the clear, crisp, cold air is like wine; and the whiteness
and sparkle and shine of the snow are like martial music, a constant
excitement and spell.

Mercy's soul thrilled within her with new delight and impulse each day.
The winter had always oppressed her before. On the seashore, winter means
raw cold, a pale, gray, angry ocean, fierce winds, and scanty wet snows.
This brilliant, frosty air, so still and dry that it never seemed cold,
this luxuriance of snow piled soft and high as if it meant shelter and
warmth,--as indeed it does,--were very wonderful to Mercy. She would have