ity before cold weather came. He
had there a small and decent steam-warmed flat where he boiled his own
eggs and made his own coffee, read his newspapers and kept his counsel,
descending nightly to the ground-floor cafe to dine on ambiguous dishes
at tables of other bank swallows who nested in the same cliff. But as
the days went by, he found himself staying on in Old Trail Town, with
this excuse and that, offered by himself to himself. As, for example,
that in the factory there were old account books that he must go
through. And having put off this task from day to day and finding at
last nothing more to dally with, he set out one morning for the ancient
building down in that part of the village which was older than the rest
and was where his business was conducted when it was conducted.

It had snowed in the night, and Buff Miles, who drove the village
snowplow, was also driver of "the 'bus." So on the morning after a
snowfall, the streets always lay buried thick until after the 8.10
Express came in; and since on the morning following a snowfall the 8.10
Express was always late, Old Trail Town lay locked in a kind of circular
argument, and everybody stayed indoors or stepped high through drifts.
The direct way to the factory was virtually untrodden, and Ebenezer made
a detour through the business street in search of some semblance of a
"track."

The light of a Winter morning is not kind, only just. It is just to the
sky and discovers it to be dominant; to trees, and their lines are seen
to be alive, like leaves; to folk, and no disguise avails. Summer gives
complements and accessories to the good things in a human face. Winter
affords nothing save disclosure. In the uncompromising cleanness of that
wash of Winter light, Ebenezer Rule was himself, for anybody to see.
Looking like countless other men, lean, alert, preoccupied, his tall
figure stooped, his smooth, pale face like a photograph too much
retouched, this commonplace man took his place in the day almost as one
of its externals. With that glorious pioneer trio, mineral, vegetable
and animal; and with intellect, that worthy tool, he did his day's work.
His face was one that had never asked itself, say, of a Winter morning:
_What else?_ And the Winter light searched him pitilessly to find that
question somewhere in him.

Before the Simeon Buck North American Dry Goods Exchange, Simeon Buck
himself had just finished shoveling his walk, and stood wiping his snow