heerful praise, and work, which is also praise.

"After I had sent my package by the mail-rider, who passed Mr. Allen's
house every other day, I thought my trouble would be easier to bear. But
every day made it harder. I fell into a miserable torpid state, taking
no interest in anything, and feeling only my misery acutely. I could not
even pray for help, for prayer itself was a cross.

"Mother was very good to me; she gave me light, pleasant work to do,
thinking to keep me busy. But however busy my hands were, my thoughts
were free, and used their freedom to make me suffer.

"Father had been gone eight days, when one afternoon mother came in from
the barn, where she had been to shake down some hay for the cows, with a
face so sober that I was frightened at once.

"'Why, mother! what is the matter?' I cried.

"'I'm worried about your father, child,' she said, and then she went to
the window and looked out.

"'Why, mother, if he started for home yesterday--'

"'He would be just in season to be caught in the snow,' she interrupted,
with a vehemence unnatural to her.

"'Snow, mother!'

"I rose, and went to the window. The sky was full of great masses of
gray clouds, that sometimes parted, and showed a steel-colored
background, intense and cold, and immeasurably distant. Wide before us
spread the waste, white, uninhabited fields,--the nearest house a mile
away, and its chimney only visible above the hills which hid it. A
tawny, brazen belt of light lying along the west, where the sun had gone
down, illuminated the snow, and gave a weird character to the whole
scene. There was a high wind swaying the tops of the tall trees before
the house; and once in a while you would see a fragment of cloud caught
from the great gray curtain, and torn into shreds, or ravelled into a
thin web, which seemed for a moment to shut close down upon us. It was a
strange night, a strange sky.

"I felt a vague alarm. But I tried to speak cheerfully. 'It is too cold
to snow, mother!'

"She pointed to the window. Even as I spoke the air was suddenly
darkened by a multitude of fine flakes, that crowded faster and faster,
and were swirled about by the wind, and quickly built up a wall around
the door.

"As it grew dark the storm increased. The wind, which had been blowing
steadily all day, rose to a gale. It tugged at the doors and windows; it
thundered down the chimney; it caught the little house, and shook it
till the timbers creaked; t