,
but the bluff little boy was still up and about, although his aspect,
round and burly, in a scanty nightgown, gave token of recognition of the
fact that bed was his appropriate place. His shrill plaintive voice rose
ever and anon wakefully.

"I wanter hear a bear tale,--I wanter hear a bear tale."

Thus Basil must needs knock the ashes from his pipe the better to devote
himself to the narration,--a prince of raconteurs, to judge by the
spell-bound interest of the youngster who stood at his knee and hung
on his words. Even Aurelia checked the whir of her wheel to listen
smilingly. She broke out laughing in appreciative pleasure when Basil
took up the violin to show how a jovial old bear, who intruded into this
very house one day when all the family were away at the church in the
cove, and who mistook the instrument for a banjo, addressed himself to
picking out this tune, singing the while a quaint and ursine lay. Basil
embellished the imitation with a masterly effect of realistic growls.

"Ef ye keep goin' at that gait, Basil," Aurelia admonished him,
"daylight will ketch us all wide awake around the fire,--no wonder the
child won't go to bed." She seemed suddenly impressed with the pervasive
cheer. "What a fool that man, Jube Kennedy, must be! How _could_
ennybody hev a sweeter, darlinger home than we uns hev got hyar in
Sunrise Gap!"

On the languorous autumn a fierce winter ensued. The cold came early.
The deciduous growths of the forests were leafless ere November waned,
rifled by the riotous marauding winds. December set in with the gusty
snow flying fast. Drear were the gray skies; ghastly the sheeted ranges.
Drifts piled high in bleak ravines, and the grim gneissoid crags were
begirt with gigantic icicles. But about the little house in Sunrise
Gap that kept so warm a heart, the holly trees showed their glad green
leaves and the red berries glowed with a mystic significance.

As the weeks wore on, the place was often in Kennedy's mind, although
he had not seen it since that autumn afternoon when he had bestirred
himself to rebuke its owner concerning the inadequacies of the domestic
provision. His admonition had been kindly meant and had not deserved
the retort, the flippant ridicule of his spiritual yearnings. Though he
still winced from the recollection, he was sorry that he had resisted
the importunacy of Basil's apology. He realized that Aurelia had
persisted to the limit of her power in the embitterment