nd she looked out to
see that Mrs. Wheeler did not forget to eat altogether, as she
was apt to do when she fell to remembering things that had
happened long ago. Mahailey was in a happy frame of mind because
her weather predictions had come true; only yesterday she had
told Mrs. Wheeler there would be snow, because she had seen
snowbirds. She regarded supper as more than usually important
when Claude put on his "velvet close," as she called his brown
corduroys.

After supper Claude lay on the couch in the sitting room, while
his mother read aloud to him from "Bleak House,"--one of the few
novels she loved. Poor Jo was drawing toward his end when Claude
suddenly sat up. "Mother, I believe I'm too sleepy. I'll have to
turn in. Do you suppose it's still snowing?"

He rose and went to look out, but the west windows were so
plastered with snow that they were opaque. Even from the one on
the south he could see nothing for a moment; then Mahailey must
have carried her lamp to the kitchen window beneath, for all at
once a broad yellow beam shone out into the choked air, and down
it millions of snowflakes hurried like armies, an unceasing
progression, moving as close as they could without forming a
solid mass. Claude struck the frozen window-frame with his fist,
lifted the lower sash, and thrusting out his head tried to look
abroad into the engulfed night. There was a solemnity about a
storm of such magnitude; it gave one a feeling of infinity. The
myriads of white particles that crossed the rays of lamplight
seemed to have a quiet purpose, to be hurrying toward a definite
end. A faint purity, like a fragrance almost too fine for human
senses, exhaled from them as they clustered about his head and
shoulders. His mother, looking under his lifted arm, strained her
eyes to see out into that swarming movement, and murmured softly
in her quavering voice:

"Ever thicker, thicker, thicker, Froze the ice on lake and river;
Ever deeper, deeper, deeper, Fell the snow o'er all the
landscape."

XVIII

Claude's bedroom faced the east. The next morning, when he looked
out of his windows, only the tops of the cedars in the front yard
were visible. Hurriedly putting on his clothes he ran to the west
window at the end of the hall; Lovely Creek, and the deep ravine
in which it flowed, had disappeared as if they had never been.
The rough pasture was like a smooth field, except for humps and
mounds like haycocks, where the snow had dr