and more than usually quick to catch
at and interpret what else might beat in vain upon the dull, corporeal
sense.

She put by her knitting at father's words, and rose and walked feebly to
the window, where she stood a long time looking out at the death-white
waste, shut in by the morose, ominous sky. Then, turning slowly, her
face alight and beautiful with that beauty which is fairer than youth,
she said, "It puts me in mind of the Great Snow, Ephraim,--it puts me in
mind of a good many things!"

Then she came back to the fire, and sat down again in her corner. Memory
was stirring, the Past unfolding its scroll. The knitting-work fell
unheeded from the old, trembling fingers. She was a girl again, and the
story of that far-off girlhood fell softly upon the evening silence.

"I was only eighteen years old, Ephraim, when your grandfather moved
down from the new State. I had lived up there in the wilderness all my
life; and I was as shy as a wild rabbit, and, in my own fashion, proud.
Father was poor in those days, for there were six of us children to feed
and clothe, and mother was delicate and often ill; so we moved into a
low, one-story house, that was old too, as well as small; but as we had
always lived in a log-house, and this was a frame one, we were more than
satisfied. We did not mind if the snow blew in at the cracks in the
roof, and nestled in little drifts on the counterpane, for we were used
to it. I remember that one bright star always peeped down at me in the
winter through the open spaces between the boards, and shone so calm and
clear that I used to fancy it was God's home, and somehow my prayers
seemed surer of getting to him when I said them in the pure light of
this star. But that was while we were in the new State. When we moved
down country, I was a grown-up girl, able to turn my hand to any chore
about the house; and I went to meeting in the meeting-house at the
Corner, and had got over my childish notions.

"Elder Crane was a very pious man, and he always preached long sermons
and made long prayers. The sermons were easier to bear than the prayers,
for the people sat through the sermon; but if you had sat down during
the prayer, you would have been thought dreadfully wicked, and the Elder
might have called your name right out the next Sabbath, and prayed for
you as a poor sinner whom Satan was tempting. And so you stood up, of
course, though the children sometimes got asleep and fell down, and