got
back through the gate, for I was on foot and several miles from home.
I trudged on for home carrying those tongs with me all the way, not
knowing why, not wishing to throw them into the briers for they were
very old and full of story, and I--was very young and full of--I cannot
tell, remembering what little _boys_ are made of. And now here they
lean against the hearth, that very pair. I packed them in the bottom
of my trunk when I started for college; I saved them through the years
when our open fire was a "base-burner," and then a gas-radiator in a
city flat. Moved, preserved, "married" these many years, they stand at
last where the boy must have dreamed them standing--that hot July day,
how long, long ago!

But why should a boy have dreamed such dreams? And what was it in a
married old pair of brass-headed hearth tongs that a boy in his teens
should have bought them at auction and then have carried them to
college with him, rattling about on the bottom of his trunk? For it
was not an over-packed trunk. There were the tongs on the bottom and a
thirty-cent edition of "The Natural History of Selborne" on the
top--that is all. That is all the boy remembers. These two things, at
least, are all that now remain out of the trunkful he started with from
home--the tongs for sentiment, and for friendship the book.

"Are you listening?" she asks, looking up to see if I have gone to
sleep.

"Yes, I 'm listening."

"And dreaming?"

"Yes, dreaming a little, too,--of you, dear, and the tongs there, and
the boys upstairs, and the storm outside, and the fire, and of this
sweet room,--an old, old dream that I had years and years ago,--all
come true, and more than true."

She slipped her hand into mine.

"Shall I go on?"

"Yes, go on, please, and I will listen--and, if you don't mind, dream a
little, too, perhaps."

There is something in the fire and the rise and fall of her voice,
something so infinitely soothing in its tones, and in Lamb, and in such
a night as this--so vast and fearful, but so futile in its bitter sweep
about the fire--that while one listens one must really dream too.

[Illustration: The ice crop]

III

THE ICE CROP

The ice-cart with its weighty tongs never climbs our Hill, yet the
icechest does not lack its clear blue cake of frozen February. We
gather our own ice as we gather our own hay and apples. The small
ice-house under the trees has just been packed with eighteen tons o