some day, Abbie. By
goll! that's all I'm good for to take on now.--Oh, it beat all what a
boy I was. I and Mother broke our first team of oxen. When you get
children, Abbie, let them raise themselves up. They'll do better at it
than a poor father or mother can. I had the finest horses and the best
phaeton for miles around, but you never saw a girl a-ridin' by the side
of me.--Some men can't work alone, Abbie. They got to have the women
around or they quit. Don't you get that kind of a man, Abbie.--Oh, she
was renowned was my old mare, Kit. You never got to the end of her. She
lived to be more'n thirty year, an' she raised fourteen colts. She was a
darned good little thing she was. I got her for a big black mare that
weighed fourteen hundred pound, an' I made 'em give me ten dollars, too,
an' I got her colt with her--"

Abbie suddenly realized that she was shivering; that her feet were cold;
that it was long after nine o'clock. Old Chris must have fallen asleep
in his chair. She went to the dining-room door and opened it; the
dining-room was dark. Why?--why, of course! Old Chris had been gone for
more than three weeks. She took hold of the door to steady herself; her
hands shook. How could she have forgotten? Was she going crazy? Would
the loneliness come to that?

Abbie went to bed. All night she lay awake, thinking. The thoughts came
of themselves. What the town had to say didn't matter after all; the
town had paid her no attention for years; it was paying her no attention
now. Why, then, should she live without any one to speak to? "I'll go
and get Old Chris, that's what I'll do. I won't live here alone any
longer." And with this decision she went to sleep.

In the morning when Abbie opened the kitchen door and stepped out onto
the porch, frost lay thick upon the well pump.

She drew her shawl close around her and took hold of the pump-handle
with her mittened hands. When she had filled the pail she went back into
the kitchen. The sound of the wind made her shiver. To walk all the way
to Mile Corners on such a day required green tea, so Abbie drank three
cupfuls. Then, as on the day when she went out to call upon "the Jersey
girls," she carried hot water up-stairs and got out fresh stockings.

About nine o'clock three women of Pastor Lucus's church, standing on the
front steps of Aunt Alphie Newberry's house, saw Abbie struggling
through a drift.

"Why, there's Abbie Snover," said Jennie Chipman.

"She's turn