very far away.

He opened the stair door and crept slowly up the steps to their little
room. He could scarcely distinguish anything at first, in the dim
light of the winter evening, but he saw enough to know that the little
straw hat with the torn brim that he had worn in the summer time was
not hanging on its peg behind the door. He looked in the washstand
drawer, where his dresses were kept. It was empty. He opened the
closet door. The new copper-toed shoes, kept for best, were gone, but
hanging in one corner was the little checked gingham apron he had worn
that morning.

Steven took it down. There was the torn place by the pocket, and the
patch on the elbow. He kissed the ruffle that had been buttoned under
the dimpled chin, and the little sleeves that had clung around his
neck so closely that morning. Then, with it held tight in his arms, he
threw himself on the bed, sobbing over and over, "It's too cruel! It's
too cruel! They didn't even let me tell him good-by!"

He did not go down to supper when Mrs. Dearborn called him, so she
went up after a while with a glass of milk and a doughnut.

"There, there!" she said soothingly; "don't take it so hard. Try and
eat something; you'll feel better if you do."

Steven tried to obey, but every mouthful choked him. "Rindy'll be
awful good to him," she said after a long pause. "She thinks he's the
loveliest child she ever set eyes on, but she was afraid her husband
would think he was too much of a baby if she took him home with those
long curls on. She cut 'em off before they started, and I saved 'em. I
knew you'd be glad to have 'em."

She lit the candle on the washstand and handed him a paper. He sat up
and opened it. There lay the soft, silky curls, shining like gold in
the candle-light, as they twined around his fingers. It was more than
he could bear. His very lips grew white.

Mrs. Dearborn was almost frightened. She could not understand how a
child's grief could be so deep and passionate.

He drew them fondly over his wet cheeks, and pressed them against his
quivering lips. Then laying his face down on them, he cried till he
could cry no longer, and sleep came to his relief.

Next morning, when Steven pulled the window curtain aside, he seemed
to be looking out on another world. The first snow of the winter
covered every familiar object, and he thought, in his childish way,
that last night's experience had altered his life as the snowdrifts
had changed the