er brown hair, pinned a gay
scarlet bow to the neck of her sack, and, looking fresh and pretty as
a rosebud, went to the kitchen, where she had to wait some time before
Aunt Betty made her appearance.

Cousin Abijah had brought the old horse and sleigh round to the back
door. Here a long slanting roof ran down to the lintel of the door,
and up to the plain cornice snow-drifts lay piled. What a winter scene
it was! Marion, never having seen the like before, gazed at it in
wondering admiration.

When Aunt Betty and Marion started for the village meeting-house, the
thermometer was fifteen degrees below zero.

Aunt Betty took a rein in each hand, and as soon as the snow-banks
bordering the narrow path to the road were safely passed, began a
series of jerks at the horse's mouth, which Dan perfectly well
understood, too well, indeed, to allow himself to be hurried in the
least.

"One foot up, and one foot down,
That's the way to Lunnon town,"

laughed Marion when they had gone a few rods.

"Klick! Klick!" with more decisive tugs from Dan's mistress; but the
"Klicks," as well as the tugs, were of no avail, and Marion, afraid to
venture another comment, turned her eyes from the horse to the scenery
around her.

Notwithstanding the extreme cold, the ride to the little meeting-house
Marion will never forget. When she left the farmhouse it seemed to her
a short walk would bring her to the foot of the snow-clad mountains;
but, to her surprise, when they reached the church they were towering
up above the small village like huge sentinels, so still, so grand,
that, hardly conscious she was speaking aloud, Marion said,--

"I never knew before what it meant in the Bible where it says, 'The
strength of the hills is his also.' Wonderful! wonderful!"

"Eh?" asked Aunt Betty, only a dim comprehension of what Marion meant
having crept in beneath the big red hood that covered her head.

Marion repeated the verse, and to her surprise her aunt answered it
with, "'Who art thou, O great mountain? Before Zerubbabel thou shalt
become a plain: and he shall bring forth the headstone thereof with
shoutings, crying grace! grace unto it.'" Not a word did she offer in
explanation; she only twitched the horse's head more emphatically, and
did not speak again until she reached the meeting-house door.

What a desolate-looking audience-room it was! Up in one corner roared
a big iron stove, which, do its be