rns--she's weel eneuch,"
thought herself a pattern of justice or even of forbearance. But both
were jealous of her, in relation to their own children; and when Mrs
Forbes sent for her one Saturday, soon after her first visit, they
hardly concealed their annoyance at the preference shown her by one who
was under such great obligation to the parents of other children every
way superior to her whose very presence somehow or other made them
uncomfortable.

CHAPTER XVI.

The winter drew on--a season as different from the summer in those
northern latitudes, as if it belonged to another solar system. Cold and
stormy, it is yet full of delight for all beings that can either romp,
sleep, or think it through. But alas for the old and sickly, in poor
homes, with scanty food and firing! Little children suffer too, though
the gift of forgetfulness does for them what the gift of faith does for
their parents--helps them over many troubles, besides tingling fingers
and stony feet. There would be many tracks of those small feet in the
morning snow, leading away across the fresh-fallen clouds from the
house and cottage doors; for the barbarity of _morning-school_, that
is, an hour and a half of dreary lessons before breakfast, was in full
operation at Glamerton.

The winter came. One morning, all the children awoke, and saw a white
world around them. Alec jumped out of bed in delight. It was a sunny,
frosty morning. The snow had fallen all night, with its own silence,
and no wind had interfered with the gracious alighting of the feathery
water. Every branch, every twig, was laden with its sparkling burden of
down-flickered flakes, and threw long lovely shadows on the smooth
featureless dazzle below. Away, away, stretched the outspread glory,
the only darkness in it being the line of the winding river. All the
snow that fell on it vanished, as death and hell shall one day vanish
in the fire of God. It flowed on, black through its banks of white.
Away again stretched the shine to the town, where every roof had the
sheet that was let down from heaven spread over it, and the streets lay
a foot deep in yet unsullied snow, soon, like the story of the ages, to
be trampled, soiled, wrought, and driven with human feet, till, at
last, God's strong sun would wipe it all away.

From the door opening into this fairy-land, Alec sprang into the
untrodden space, as into a new America. He had discovered a world,
without even the print of