The Project Gutenberg EBook of Madelon, by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

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Title: Madelon
A Novel

Author: Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

Release Date: March 1, 2006 [EBook #17885]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MADELON ***

Produced by Jeff Kaylin and Andrew Sly

Madelon

A Novel

By

Mary E. Wilkins

Author of "A Humble Romance"
"Jane Field" etc.

New York
Harper & Brothers Publishers
1896

Love is the crown, and the crucifixion, of life,
and proves thereby its own divinity.

Chapter I

There was a new snow over the village. Indeed, it had ceased to fall
only at sunset, and it was now eight o'clock. It was heaped
apparently with the lightness of foam on the windward sides of the
roads, over the fences and the stone walls, and on the village roofs.
Its weight was evident only on the branches of the evergreen-trees,
which were bent low in their white shagginess, and lost their upward
spring.

There were evergreens--Norway pines, spruces, and hemlocks--bordering
the road along which Burr Gordon was coming. Now and then he jostled
a low-hanging bough and shook off its load of snow upon his
shoulders. Then he walked nearer the middle of the street, tramping
steadily through the new snow. This was an old road, but little used
of late years, and the forest seemed to be moving upon it with the
unnoted swiftness of a procession endless from the beginning of the
world. In places the branches of the opposite pines stretched to each
other like white-draped arms across the road, and slender, snow-laden
saplings stood out in young crowds well in advance of the old trees.
At times the road was no more than a cart-path through the forest;
but it was a short-cut to the Hautville place, and that was why Burr
Gordon went that way.

Everything was very still. The new-fallen snow seemed to muffle
silence itself, and do away with that wide susceptibility to sound
which affects one as forcibly as the crashing of cannon.

There was no whisper of life from the village, which lay a half-mile
back; no roll of wheels, or shout, or peal of bell. Burr Gordon kept
on in utter si