"Didn't you hear me say I didn't?" replied Jim, with sudden force.
"Don't let's talk any more about it, mother. It's a dreadful piece of
work, anyway. I don't half know what it means myself. That poor girl
is 'most crazy because that fellow is in prison. That's why she came
on this wild-goose chase after me. You can't tell anything by what
she says."

"Wasn't he a nice kind of a fellow before this happened, Jim?"

"No, he was a scamp," said Jim Otis, angrily. He struck into the
"Fisher's Hornpipe" with fury, regardless of the girl up-stairs.

"Land sakes, Jim, don't fiddle quite so loud as that--I'm dreadful
afraid she'll hear," said his mother. "I shouldn't thought a girl
that looks as sweet as she does would ever have taken up with a
scamp."

"The sweetest girls are the worst fools," answered Jim, bitterly, but
he obeyed his mother and played less loudly. The shadows of the
winter night might have footed it to the soft measures of the
hornpipe which Jim Otis played on his fiddle. His mother could
scarcely hear it in the pantry when she went in there to set away the
supper dishes. She shut the door every time, lest her son should feel
the icy air from the fireless closet. She had always a belief that
Jim was delicate, and took a certain pride in it, although she could
not have told why.

Everything that was in the least likely to freeze to its injury had
to be removed from the cold pantry and set on the hearth that bitter
night. It was quite a while before her soft, heavy pattering, which
jarred the house when she stepped on certain parts of the floor,
ceased, and she took her knitting-work and sat down in her
rocking-chair opposite her son.

Jim continued to fiddle, touching the strings as if his fingers were
muffled with down. The wind whistled more loudly than his fiddle; it
had increased, and the cold with it. Some of Mrs. Otis's crocks froze
on the hearth that night. No such cold had been known in Vermont for
years. The frost on the window-panes thickened--the light of the full
moon could not penetrate them; all over the house were heard sounds
like those on a straining ship at sea. The old timbers cracked now
and then with a report like a pistol. "It's a dreadful night," said
Mrs. Otis, and as she spoke the returning wind struck the house, and
she gasped as if it had in truth taken her breath away.

A few minutes before nine o'clock Mrs. Otis put away her
knitting-work and got the great Bible off the