er clothes, and sent her scurrying across the
frozen lake to the yellow house.

"And don't come back till spring!" she commanded.

"Spring?" Jan-an paused as she was strapping on an old pair of skates
that once belonged to Philander Sniff. "Spring? Gawd!"

It was a terrific winter. The still, intense kind that grips every
snowstorm as a miser does his money, hiding it in secret places of the
hills where the divine warmth of the sun cannot find it.

The wind, early in November, set in the north! Occasionally the "ha'nt
wind" troubled it; wailed a bit and caught the belfry bell, and then
gave up and sobbed itself away.

At the inn a vague something--was it old age or lost faith?--was
trying to conquer Peter's philosophy and Aunt Polly's spiritual
vision. The _Thing_, whatever it was, was having a tussle, but it made
its marks. Peter sat oftener by the fire with Ginger edging close to
the leg that the gander had once damaged and which, now, acted as an
indicator for Peter's moods. When he did not want to talk his "leg
ached." When his heart sank in despair his "leg ached." But Polly, a
little thinner, a little more dim as to far-off visions, caught every
mood of Peter's and sent it back upon him like a boomerang. She met
his silent hours with such a flare of talk that Peter responded in
self-defence. His black hours she clutched desperately and held them
up for him to look at after she had charged them with memories of
goodness and love.

As for herself? Well, Aunt Polly nourished her own brave spirit by
service and an insistent, demanding cry of justice.

"'Tain't fair and square to hold anything against the Almighty," she
proclaimed, "till you've given Him a chance to show what He did things
for."

Polly waxed eloquent and courageous; she kept her own faith by voicing
it to others; it grew upon reiteration.

Peter was in one of his worst combinations--silence and low
spirits--when Polly entered the kitchen one early afternoon. A glance
at the huddling form by the red-hot range had the effect of turning
Polly into steel. She looked at Ginger, who reflected his master's
moods pathetically, and her steel became iron.

"I suppose if I ask you, Peter, how you're feeling," she said slowly,
calmly, "you'll fling your leg in my face! It's monstrous to see how
an able-bodied man can use any old lie to save his countenance."

"My leg----" Peter began, but Polly stopped him. She had hung her coat
and hood in the close