ish me--surely,
the touch of that arm, as we went, would have been more than enough to
reward even the most chivalrous deeds of yore.

THREE. Dawn and Diamonds

Two days before Christmas the ground was still bare. I had a splendid
new cutter with a top and side curtains; a heavy outfit, but one that
would stand up, I believed, under any road conditions. I was anxious to
use it, too, for I intended to spend a two weeks' holiday up north with
my family. I was afraid, if I used the buggy, I might find it impossible
to get back to town, seeing that the first heavy winter storms usually
set in about the turn of the year.

School had closed at noon. I intended to set out next morning at as
early an hour as I could. I do not know what gave me my confidence, but
I firmly expected to find snow on the ground by that time. I am rather
a student of the weather. I worked till late at night getting my cutter
ready. I had to adjust my buggy pole and to stow away a great number of
parcels. The latter contained the first real doll for my little girl,
two or three picture books, a hand sleigh, Pip--a little stuffed dog of
the silkiest fluffiness--and as many more trifles for wife and child as
my Christmas allowance permitted me to buy. It was the first time in the
five years of my married life that, thanks to my wife's co-operation in
earning money, there was any Christmas allowance to spend; and since I
am writing this chiefly for her and the little girl's future reading,
I want to set it down here, too, that it was thanks to this very same
co-operation that I had been able to buy the horses and the driving
outfit which I needed badly, for the poor state of my health forbade
more rigorous exercise. I have already said, I think, that I am
essentially an outdoor creature; and for several years the fact that I
had been forced to look at the out-of-doors from the window of a town
house only, had been eating away at my vitality. Those drives took
decades off my age, and in spite of incurable illness my few friends say
that I look once more like a young man.

Besides my Christmas parcels I had to take oats along, enough to feed
the horses for two weeks. And I was, as I said, engaged that evening in
stowing everything away, when about nine o'clock one of the physicians
of the town came into the stable. He had had a call into the country, I
believe, and came to order a team. When he saw me working in the shed,
he stepped up and said,