mson day, thronging up from behind the hills, she tried to thrust
down all the pains of the night as moody fancies. They did not go. She
bathed herself, woke the children, laughed and romped with them (for
their year's holiday should not be damped); but the cold, unsufferable
weight within dragged her physically down. Trifles without, too, beset
her with vague fears. Ready was gone; for years he had not left the
house at night. The children began to look with uneasy eyes at her face:
she would betray all. She kept her fingers thrust in the breast of her
wrapper to touch the case of the picture: she could hold herself quiet
so. How cold and unmeaning the light was that day to her! and every tick
of the clock seemed to beat straight on her brain. So the morning crept
by. She grew so sure--without reason--that it was the last day of
waiting, that, when the children went out to build their snow-man, she
sat down on Jem's chest, shivering and dizzy; when the snow cracked
under a step outside, afraid to turn her head,--thinking he would be
standing in the door, with the old patient smile on his mouth, and his
hand out. But he did not come.

* * * * *

About half a mile on the other side of Shag's Hill there is a hotel, off
from the road, looking like an overgrown Swiss _chalet_. Not a
country-tavern by any means. Starr, a New-York caterer, keeps it, as a
sort of boarding-house for a few wealthy Pittsburg families in summer:
however, if you should stop there at any time of the year, you would be
sure of a delicate _croquette_ and a fair glass of wine. Usually, Starr
and his family are the only occupants in winter, but on this Christmas
eve there were lights in two of the upper rooms. M. Soule, the Mobile
financier, so well known through the West, with his family, had occupied
them for about a week; this evening, too, a Mr. Frazier from St. Louis
was at the house: there was a collision of trains near Beaver, and he
had left the other passengers and come over to Starr's, intending to go
on horseback up to Pittsburg in the morning. An old acquaintance of the
Soules, apparently: he had dined with them that evening, and when Starr
went up about ten o'clock to know if Mr. Soule wished to go out gunning
in the morning, he found the old man still standing with his back to the
fire, talking sharply of the Little Miami Railroad shares, then
beginning to go up. "A thorough old Shylock," thought Starr, waiti