husband's face. It was a fine, thoroughly English
face, with high forehead, brilliant blue eyes, and thick curling hair
and beard of a bright golden-brown. A handsome face, and a strong one,
but for a womanish fulness of the ruddy lips, and a slight lack of
firmness about the chin, which was concealed, however, by the
luxuriant beard. It was a face which could, and habitually did,
radiate amiability, good cheer, and intelligence, but which had a way
of settling at times into stern and melancholy lines, curiously
belying his assured carriage, and the sonorous ring of his ready
laugh.

Very good to look at was James Dixon, and, as his townsmen unanimously
admitted, in spite of his English birth, a good citizen, a shrewd
politician, a generous neighbor, and, though at times a little
reticent and abstracted, a companionable fellow altogether.

Even now, as he sat at his own table, one might have detected a kind
of alertness in his eyes, as of a man ever on his guard, and what
seemed almost a studied avoidance of his wife's soft, persistent gaze,
as she sat opposite him.

"Sh! What was that?" she suddenly exclaimed. There had been a faint
sound outside the window. It had ceased now.

"It was nothing, Bab!" said her husband. "How nervous you are!"

Even as he spoke the sound was repeated, and he himself started now.

"I'm catching your nervousness, Bab," he said, with a short laugh.
"The wind is the very deuce to-night."

At that moment a little girl in her nightgown ran out from the
adjoining room, and with a gleeful cry sprang into his arms, her long
yellow hair spreading itself over his shoulder.

"You see, dear old papa, Bab _wasn't_ asleep!" she cried, covering his
face with kisses.

"And why _isn't_ Bab asleep?" her father said, with an assumption of
sternness.

"Because she _can't_ sleep. The wind makes such a noise in the pines,
and the icicles keep falling off the eaves, and make such a pretty
tinkling on the snow. Do you hear it? Hark!"

"The wind increases fearfully," said the wife, going to the window and
drawing the shade. "It is a bitter night."

"Bad enough for anybody to be out in," said Dixon, with the
comfortable air of one safely housed. He moved his chair to the fire,
and began fondling and playing with the pretty child on his knee. Her
little face, however, had grown suddenly grave.

"What is it, pussy?" asked her father; "it looks so serious all at
once."

"I was thinking," said the ch