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It is the middle of winter, and is snowing, and has been
all night, with a strong north-east wind. Let us take a
moment when the storm intermits, and look in at Margaret's
and see how they do. But we cannot approach the
place by any ordinary locomotion; the roads, lanes and
by-paths are blocked up; no horse or ox could make
his way through this great Sahara of snow. If we are disposed
to adopt the means of conveyance formerly so much
in vogue, whether snowshoes or magic, we may possibly
get there. The house or hut is half sunk in the general
accumulation, as if it had foundered and was going to the
bottom; the face of the Pond is smooth, white and stiff as
death; the oxen and the cow in the barnyard, in their stormfleeces,
look like a new variety of sheep. All is silence and
lifelessness, and if you please to say, desolation. Hens
there are none, nor turkeys, nor ducks, nor birds, nor
Bull, nor Margaret. If you see any signs of a human
being, it is the dark form of Hash, mounted on snowshoes,
going from the house to the barn. Yet there are, what by
a kind of provincial misnomer is called the black growth,
pines and firs, green as in summer, some flanking the hill
behind, looking like the real snowballs, blossoming in midwinter,
and nodding with large white flowers. But there
is one token of life, the smoke of the stunt gray chimney,
which, if you regard it as one, resembles a large, elongated,
transparent balloon; or if you look at it by piecemeal, it is

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a beautiful current of bluish-white vapor, flowing upward
unendingly; and prettily is it striped and particolored, as it
passes successively the green trees, bare rocks, and white
crown of Indian's Head; nor does its interest cease, even
when it disappears among the clouds. Some would dwell
a good while on that smoke, and see in it many outshows
and denotements of spiritualities; others would say, the
house is buried so deep it must come from the hot, mischief-hatching
heart of the earth; others still would fancy
the whole region to be in its winding-sheet, and that if they
looked into the house they would behold the dead faces of
their friends. Our own notion is that that smoke is a quiet,
domestic affair, that it even has the flavor of some sociable
cookery, and is legitimately issued from a grateful and pleasant
fire; and that if we should go into the house we should
find the family as usual there; a suggestion which, as the
storm begins to renew itself, we shall do well to take the
opportunity to verify.

Flourishing in the midst of snowbanks, unmoved amid the
fiercest onsets of the storm, comfortable in the extremity
of winter, the family are all gathered in the kitchen, and
occupied as may be. In the cavernous fireplace burns a great
fire, composed of a huge green backlog and forestick, and
a high cob-work of crooked and knotty refuse wood. The
flame is as bright and golden as in Windsor Palace, or Fifth
Avenue, New York. The smoke goes off out-doors with
no more hesitancy than if it was summer time. The wood
sings, the sap drops on the hot coals, and explodes as if it
was Independence Day. Great red coals roll out on the
hearth, sparkle a semibrief, lose their grosser substance, indicate
a more ethereal essence in prototypal forms of white,
down-like cinders, and then dissolve into brown ashes.

To a stranger the room has a sombre aspect, rather

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heightened than relieved by the light of the fire burning so
brightly at midday. The only connection with the external
world is by a rude aperture through the sides of the building;—
yet when the outer light is so obscured by a storm,
the bright fire within must any where be pleasant. In one
corner of the room is Pluck, in a red flannel shirt and
leather apron, at work on his kit mending shoes; with long
and patient vibration and equipoise he draws the threads,
and interludes the strokes with snatches of songs, banter
and laughter. The apartment seems converted into a workshop,
for next the shoemaker stands the shingle-maker,
Hash, who with froe in one hand and mallet in the other, by
dint of smart percussion, is endeavoring to rive a three-cornered
billet of hemlock. In the centre sits Brown Moll,
with bristling and grizzly hair, and her inseparable pipe,
winding yarn from a swift. Nearer the fire are Chilion and
Margaret; the latter with the Orbis Pictus, or World Displayed,
a book of Latin and English, adorned with cuts,
which the Master lent her; the former with his violin, endeavoring
to describe the notes in Dr. Byle's Collection of
Sacred Music, also a loan of the Master's, and at intervals
trailing on the lead of his father in some popular air. We
shall also see that one of Chilion's feet is raised on a stool,
bandaged, and apparently disabled. Bull, the dog, lies
rounded on the hearth, his nose between his paws, fast
asleep. Dick, the gray squirrel, sits swinging listlessly in
his wire wheel, like a duck on a wave. Robin, the bird,
in its cage, shrugs and folds itself into its feathers, as if it
were night. Over the fireplace, on the rough stones of the
chimney, which day and night through all the long winter
now cease to be warm, are Margaret's flowers; a blood-root
in the marble pot Rufus Palmer gave her, and in wooden

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moss-covered boxes, pinks, violets and buttercups, green
and flowering. Here, also, as a sort of mantletree ornament,
sits the marble kitten that Rufus made, under a cedar
twig. At one end of the crane, in the vacant side of the
fireplace, hang rings of pumpkin rinds drying for beer.
On the walls, in addition to what was there last summer,
are strings of dried apples. There is also a draw-horse,
on which Hash smooths and squares his shingles; and a
pile of fresh, sweet-scented white shavings and splinters.
Through the yawns of the back-door and sundry rents in
the logs of the house filter in, unweariedly, fine particles of
snow, and thus along the sides of the rooms rise little coneshaped,
marble-like pilasters.

Within doors is a mixed noise of miscellaneous operations;
without is the rushing of the storm. Pluck snipsnaps
with his wife, cracks on Hash, shows his white teeth
to Margaret; Chilion asks his sister to sing; Hash orders
her to bring a coal to light his pipe; her mother gets her to
pick a snarl out of the yarn. She climbs upon a stool and
looks out of the window. The scene is obscured by the
storm; the thick driving flakes throw a brownish mizzly
shade over all things, air, trees, hills, and every avenue the
eye has been wont to traverse. The light tufts hiss like
arrows as they shoot by. The leafless butternut, whereon
the whippoorwill used to sing, and the yellow warbler make
its nest, sprawls its naked arms, and moans pitifully in the
blast; the snow that for a moment is amassed upon it, falls
to the ground like a harvest of alabaster fruit. The peach-tree,
that bears Margaret's own name, and is of her own
age, seems to be drowning in the snow. Water drops from
the eaves, occasioned by the snow melting about the
chimney.

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“I should'nt wonder if we had a snow-storm, before it's
over, Molly,” said Pluck, strapping his knife on the edge
of the kit.

“And you are getting ready for it, fast,” rejoined his
wife. “I should be thankful for those shoes any time before
next July. I can't step out without wetting my feet.”

“Wetting is not not so bad after all,” answered Pluck.
“For my part I keep too dry.—Who did the Master tell
you was the god of shoemakers?” he asked, addressing
Margaret.

“St. Crispin,” replied the child.

“Guess I'll pay him a little attention,” said the man,
going to the rum bottle that stood by the chimney. “I feel
some interest in these things, and I think I have some
reason to indulge a hope that I am among the elect.”

“He wouldn't own you,” said his wife, tartly.

“Why, dear?”

“Because you are not a man; you are not the thrum of
one. Scrape you all up, and we shouldn't get lint enough
to put on Chilion's foot.”

“Look at that,” said her husband, exposing his bare arm,
flabby and swollen; “what do you think now?”

“Mutton fat! Try you out, run you into cakes, make a
present of you to your divinity to grease his boots with.
The fire is getting low, Meg; can't you bring in some
wood?”

“You are a woman really!” retorted Pluck, “to send
the child out in such a storm, when it would take three
men to hold one's head on.”

“Ha, ha!” laughed out his spouse. “You must have
stitched your own on; I don't wonder you are afraid.—
That is the way you lost your ear trying to hold on your
head in a storm, ha ha!”

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“Well,” rejoined Pluck, “you think you are equal to
three men in wit, learning, providing, don't you?”

“Mayhaps so.”

“And weaving, spinning, coloring, reeling, twisting,
cooking, clinching, henpecking?—I guess you are. Can
you tell, dearest Maria, what is Latin for the Widow's
Obed's red hair?”

“I can for the maggot that makes powder-post of our
whole family, Didymus Hart.”

Pluck laughed, and staggered towards his bench.

“I knew we should have a storm,” said his wife, “after
such a cold spell; I saw a Bull's Eye towards night; my
corns have been pricking more than usual; a flight of
snow-birds went by day before yesterday. And it won't
hold up till after the full, and that's to-night.”

“I thought as much too,” answered Pluck. “Bottle
has emptied fast, glums been growing darker in the face,
windle spun faster, cold potatoes for dinner, hot tongue for
supper.'

“You shall fetch the wood, Meg, or I'll warm your back
with a shingle,” said her mother, flinging out a threat which
she had no intention of executing. “Hash is good for
something, that he is.”

“Yes, Maharshalalhashbaz, my second born,” interjected
Pluck, “sell your shingles to the women; they'll give you
more than Deacon Penrose; it is such a nice thing for
heating a family with. We shan't need any more roofs to
our houses—always excepting, of course, your dear and
much-honored mother, who is a warming-pan in herself,
good as a Bath Stove.”

Hash, spurred on by this double shot, plied his mallet
the harder, and declared with an oath that he would not get

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the wood, they might freeze first; adding that he hauled
and cut it, and that was his part.

Chilion whispered to his sister and she went out for the
purpose in question. It was not excessively cold, since the
weather moderated as the storm increased, and she might
have taken some interest in that tempestuous outer world.
The wind blazed and racketed through the narrow space
between the house and the hill. The flakes shaded
and mottled the sky, and fell twirling, pitching, skimblescamble,
and anon, slowly and more regularly, as in a
minuet; and as they came nearer the ground, they were
caught up by the current, and borne in a horizontal line,
like long, quick spun, silver threads, afar across the landscape.
There was but little snow in the shed, although
entirely open on the south side; the storm seeming to
devote itself to building up a drift in front. This drift had
now reached a height of seven or eight feet. It sloped up
like the roof of a pyramid, and on the top was an appendage
like a horn, or a plume, or a marble jet d'eau, or a frozen
flame of fire; and the elements in all their violence, the
eddies that veered about the corner of the house, the occasional
side blasts, still dallied, and stopped to mould it
and finish it; and it became thinner, and more tapering and
spiral; each singular flake adjusting itself to the very tip,
with instinctive nicety; till at last it broke off by its own
weight—then a new one went on to be formed. Under
this drift lay the wood Margaret was after, and she hesitated
to demolish the pretty structure. The cistern was
overrun with ice; the water fell from the spout in an ice
tube, the half barrel was rimmed about with a broad round
moulding of similar stuff, and where the water flowed off, it
had formed a solid wavy cascade, and under the cold

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snows the clear cold water could be heard babbling and
singing as if it no whit cared for the weather. From the
corner of the house the snow fretted and spirted in continuous
shower. A flock of snowbirds suddenly flashed
before the eyes of the child, borne on by the wind; they
endeavored to tack about, and run in under the lee of the
shed, but the remorseles elements drifted them on, and they
were apparently dashed against the woods beyond. Seeing
one of the little creatures drop, Margaret darted out through
the snow, caught the luckless or lucky wanderer, and amid
the butting winds, sharp rack, and smothering sheets of
spray, carried it into the house. In her Book of Birds, she
found it to be a snow-bunting; that it was hatched in a nest
of reindeer's hair near the North Pole, that it had sported
among eternal solitudes of rocks and ice, and come thousands
of miles. It was purely white, while others of the species
are rendered in darker shades. She put it in the cage
with Robin, who received the travelled stranger with due
respect.

Night came on and Margaret went to bed. The wind
puffed, hissed, whistled, shrieked, thundered, sighed, howled,
by turns. The house jarred and creaked, her bed rocked
under her, loose boards on the roof clappered and rattled,
snow pelted the window-shutter. In such a din and tustle
of the elements lay the child. She had no sister to nestle
with her, and snug her up; no gentle mother to fold the
sheets about her neck, and tuck in the bed; no watchful
father to come with a light, and see that all was safe.

In the fearfulness of that night, she sung or said to herself
some words of the Master's, which he however must
have given her for a different purpose—for of needs must a
stark child's nature in such a crisis appeal to something

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above and superior to itself, and she had taken a floating
impression that the Higher Agencies, whatever they might
be, existed in Latin:—

As she slept amid the passion of the storm, softly did the
snow from the roof distil upon her feet, and sweetly did
dreams from heaven descend into her soul. In her dream
she was walking in a large, high, self-illuminated hall, with
flowers, statues and columns on either side. Above, it
seemed to vanish into a sort of opaline-colored invisibility.
The statues, of clear white marble, large as life, and the
flowers in marble vases, alternated with each other between
the columns, whose ornamented capitals merged in the
shadows above. There was no distinct articulate voice,
but a low murmuring of the air, or sort of musical pulsation,
that filled the place. The statues seemed to be for the
most part marble embodiments of pictures she had seen in
the Master's books. There were the Venus de Medicis;
Diana, with her golden bow; Ceres, with poppies and ears
of corn; Humanity, “with sweet and lovely countenance;”
Temperance, pouring water from a pitcher; Diligence,
with a sickle and sheaf; Peace, and her crown of olives;
Truth, with “her looks serene, pleasant, courteous, cheerful,
and yet modest.” The flowers were such as she had sometimes
seen about houses in the village, but of rare size and
beauty;—cactuses, dahlias, carnations, large pink hydrangeas,
white japonicas, calla lilies, and others. Their
shadows waved on the white walls, and it seemed to her as
if the music she heard issued from their cups.

Sauntering along she came to a marble arch, or

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doorway, handsomely sculptured, and supported on caryatides.
This opened to a large rotunda, where she saw nine
beautiful female figures swimming in a circle in the air.
These strewed on her as she passed leaves and flowers of
amaranth, angelica, myrtle, white jasmin, white poppy, and
eglantine; and spun round and round silently as swallows.
By a similar arch, she went into another rotunda, where
was a marble monument or sarcophagus, from which two
marble children with wings were represented as rising, and
above them fluttered two iris-colored butterflies. Through
another door-way she entered a larger space opening to the
heavens. In this she saw a woman, the same woman she had
before seen in her dreams, with long black hair, and a pale
beautiful face, who stood silently pointing to a figure far off
on the rose-colored clouds. This figure was Christ, whom she
recognized. Near him, on the round top of a purple cloud,
having the blue distant sky for a background, was the milk-white
Cross, twined with evergreens; about it, hand in
hand, she saw moving as in a distance four beautiful female
figures, clothed in white robes. These she remembered as
the ones she saw in her dream at the Still, and she now
knew them to be Faith, Hope, Love, and their sister, who
was yet of their own creation, Beauty. Then in her
dream she returned, and at the door where she entered this
mysterious place she found a large green bull-frog, with
great goggle eyes, having a pond-lily saddled to his back.
Seating herself in the cup, she held on by the golden
pistils as the pommel of a saddle, and the frog leaped with
her clear into the next morning, in her own little dark
chamber.

When she awoke the wind and noise without had ceased.
A perfect cone of pure white snow lay piled up over her
feet, and she attributed her dream partly to that. She

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opened the window-shutter; it was even then snowing in
large, quiet, moist flakes, which showed that the storm was
nearly at an end; and in the east, near the sunrising, she
saw the clouds bundling up, ready to go away. She descended
to the kitchen, where a dim, dreary light entered from
the window. Chilion, who, unable to go up the ladder to
his chamber, had a bunk of pelts of wild beasts near the
fire, still lay there. Under a bank of ashes and cinders,
smoked and sweltered the remains of the great backlog.

Pluck opened the ashes and drew forward the charred
stick, which cracked and crumbled into large deep crimson,
fine-grained, glowing coals, throwing a ruddy glare over the
room. He dug a trench for the new log, deep as if he were
laying a cellar wall.

After breakfast Margaret opened the front door to look
out. Here rose a straight and sheer breastwork of snow,
five feet or more in height, nicely scarfing the door and
lintels. Pluck could just see over it, but for this purpose
Margaret was obliged to use a chair. The old gentleman,
in a fit of we shall not say uncommon good feeling, declared
he would dig through it. So seizing a shovel he went by
the back door to the front of the house, at a spot where the
whiffling winds had left the earth nearly bare, and commenced
his subnivean work. Margaret, standing in the
chair, saw him disappear under the snow, which he threw
behind him like a rabbit. She awaited in great excitement
his reappearance under the drift, hallooed to him, and
threatened to set the dog on him as a thief. Pluck made
some gruff unusual sound, beat the earth with his shovel;
the dog bow wow'd at the snow; Margaret laughed. Soon
this mole of a man poked his shovel through, and straightway
followed with himself, all in a sweat, and the snow
melting like wax from his hot, red face. Thus was opened

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a snow-tunnel, as good to Margaret as the Thames, two or
three rods long, and three or four feet high, and through it
she went.

The storm had died away; the sun was struggling
through the clouds as if itself in search of warmth from
what looked like the hot, glowing face of the earth; there
were blue breaks in the sky overhead; and far off, above
the frigid western hills, lay violet-fringed cloud-drifts. A
bank of snow, reaching in some places quite to the eaves of
the house, buried many feet deep the mallows, dandelions,
rosebushes and hencoops.

The chestnuts shone in the new radiance with their
polished, shivering, cragged limbs, a spectacle both to pity
and admire. The evergreens drooped under their burdens
like full-blown sunflowers. The dark, leafless spray of the
beeches looked like bold delicate netting or linear embroidery
on the blue sky, or as if the trees, interrupted in
their usual method of growth, were taking root in midwinter
up among the warm transparent heavens.

Pluck sported with Margaret, throwing great armfuls of
snow that burst and scattered over her like rocks of down,
then suffering himself to be fired at in turn. He set her
astride the dog, who romped and flounced, and pitched her
into a drift whence her father drew her by her ankles. As
he was going in through the tunnel, a pile of snow that lay
on the roof of the house fell and broke the frail arch,
burying the old man in chilly ruins. He gasped, floundered,
and thrust up his arms through the superincumbent mass,
like a drowning man. Margaret leaped with laughter, and
Brown Moll herself coming to the door was so moved by
the drollery of the scene as to be obliged to withdraw her
pipe to laugh also. Bull was ordered to the rescue, who,
doing the best he could under the circumstances, wallowing

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belly-deep in the snow, seized the woollen shirt-sleeve of
his master, and tugged at it, till he raised its owner's head
to the surface. Pluck, unmoved in humor by the coolness
of the drench, stood sunk to his chin in the snow, and
laughed as heartily as any of them, his shining bald pate
and whelky red face streaming with moisture and shaking
with merriment. At length both father and child got into
the house and dried themselves by the fire.

Chilion demanded attention; his foot pained him; it
grew swollen and inflamed. Margaret bathed and poulticed
it, she held it in her lap and soothed it with her hand. A
preparation of the Widow's was suggested. Hash would
not go for it, Pluck and his wife could not, and Margaret
must go. Bull could not go with her, and she must go
alone. She was equipped with a warm hood, martin-skin
tippet, and a pair of snowshoes. She mounted the high,
white, fuffy plain and went on with a soft, yielding, yet
light step, almost as noiseless as if she were walking the
clouds. There was no guide but the trees; ditches by the
way-side, knolls, stones, were all a uniform level. She
saw a slightly-raised mound, indicating a large rock she
clambered over in summer. Black spikes and seed-heads
of dead golden rods and mullens dotted the way. Here
was a grape vine that seemed to have had a skirmish with
the storm and both to have conquered, for the vine was
crushed, and the snow lay in tatters upon it. About the
trunk of some of the large trees was a hollow pit reaching
quite to the ground, where the snow had waltzed round and
round till it grew tired, and left. Wherever there was a
fence, thither had the storm betaken itself, and planted
alongside mountain-like embankments, impenetrable dikes,
and inaccessible bluffs.

Entering thicker woods Margaret saw the deep,

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unalloyed beauty of the season; the large moist flakes that fell
in the morning had furred and mossed every limb and
twig, each minute process and filament, each aglet and
thread, as if the pure spirits of the air had undertaken to
frost the trees for the marriage festival of their Prince.
The slender white birches, with silver bark and ebon
boughs, that grew along the path, were bent over; their
arms met intertwiningly; and thus was formed a perfect
arch, voluptuous, dream-like, glittering, under which she
went. All was silent as the moon; there was no sound of
birds, or cows, sheep, dinner-horns, axes or wind. There
was no life, but only this white, shining, still-life wrought
in boreal ivory. No life? From the dusky woods darted
out those birds that bide a New England winter; dovecolored
muthatches quank quanked among the hemlocks;
a whole troop of titmice and woodpeckers came bustling
and whirring across the way, shaking a shower of fine tiny
raylets of snow on the child's head; she saw the graceful
snowbirds, our common bird, with ivory bill, slate-colored
back and white breast, perched on the top of the mulleins
and picking out the seeds. Above all, far above the forest
and the snow-capped hills, caw cawed the great black crow.
All at once, too, darted up from the middle of a snowdrift
by the side of the road a little red squirrel, who sat bolt
upright on his hind legs, gravely folded his paws and
surveyed her for a moment, as much as to say, “How do
you do?” then in a trice, with a squeak, he dove back into
his hole.

Approaching the Widow's, she crossed the Porta Salutaris
and all the scrawls of the stump fence, without touching
them, on a mound of snow that extended across the
garden, half covering the side of the house, wholly hiding
Obed's savory beds, and nearly enveloping the beehive,

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where, on the pardoxical idea that snow keeps out cold, the
bees must have been cozy and warm. Reaching the door,
she stooped to find the handle, but Obed, who espied her
coming, was already on the spot, and handed her down
from the drift as he would from the back of a horse. The
Goddess of the Temple very cordially received her in her
adytum, that is to say, the kitchen.

What with the deep snowbanks without, the great fire
within, and the deft and accurate habits of the lady of the
house, every thing was neat, snug and comfortable as heart
could wish. A kettle over the fire simmered like the livelong
singing of crickets in a bed of brakes in summer time,
and there was a pleasant garden perfume from numerous
herbs dispersed through the room.

The Widow asked her son to read sundry scraps of
writing she had, for Margaret's particular edification. “You
see,” she said, “he's as smart and perlite as any on um.
His nat'ral parts is equal to the Master's, and he only needs
a little eddecation teu be a great man. There's a good
deal in the way of bringing children up Peggy; you'll
know when you have been a mother as long as I have.
How much have I sold, think, sen the Master was here?
Nigh forty boxes.”

After having sufficiently enlightened Margaret in these
matters, she promised her the salve of which she was in
quest, provided she would help Obed a while in pasting
labels on the boxes. These she had sent to Kidderminster
to be printed, black type on a red ground.

When Margaret left for home, the sun had gone down,
and the moon rose full, to run its high circuit in these winter
heavens. The snow that had melted on the trees during
the day, as the cool air of evening came on, descended
in long wavy icicles from the branches, and the woods in

[figure description] Page 230.[end figure description]

their entire perspective were tricked with these pendants.
It was magic land to the child, almost as beautiful as her
dream, and she looked for welcome faces up among the glittering
trees, and far off in the white clouds. It was still as
her dream, too, and her own voice as she went singing
along, echoing in the dark forest, was all she could hear.
The moon tinged the icicles with a bright silver lustre, and
the same pure radiancy was reflected from the snow. Anon
she fell into shade of the Moon on her left; while at her
right, through the dark boughs of the evergreens, she saw
the planet Venus, large and brilliant, just setting on the
verge of the horizon in the impearled pathway of the sun.
She thought of her other dream at the Still, of Beauty, fair
sister of three fair sisters, and she might have gone off in
waking dreams among the fantasies of real existence, when
she was drawn back by the recollection of her brother, to
whose assistance she hastened. It was very cold, her breath
showed like smoke in the clear atmosphere, and the dew
from her mouth froze on her tippet. All at once there was
a glare of red light about her, the silver icicles were transformed
to rubies, and the snowfields seemed to bloom with
glowing sorrel flowers. It was the Northern Lights that shot
up their shafts, snapped their sheets, unfurled their flaming
penons, and poured their rich crimson dies upon the enamelled
earth. She thought the Winter and the World were
beautiful, her way became more bright, and she hurried on
to Chilion;—for whom, day by day, hour by hour, she
labored and watched, assiduously, tenderly; still his foot
mended apace, though it never got entirely well.

One morning Obed called for Margaret to go with him
to the village. There had been a rain the day before, followed
by a cold night, and the fields were glazed with a
smooth hard crust. They both took sleds, Margaret her

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blue-painted Humming Bird, which she received as a
Thanksgiving present a while before. Obed had on a bright
red knit woollen cap, that came down over his ears, and
fitted close to his head, having a spiral top surmounted with
a tassel.

It was a clear day, and the sun and the earth seemed to
be striving together which should shine with the greatest
strength; and they served as mirrors respectively in which
to set off one another's charms. As Margaret and Obed went
on, the light seemed to blow and glow through the forest like
a blacksmith's forge, and the traveller would almost be afraid
of encountering fiery flames if he went on. Now riding
down pitches, now dragging their sleds up acclivities, they
emerged so far from the woods as to overlook the village
and open country beyond. A steam-like vapor arose from
the frozen River, diffused itself through the atmosphere,
and hung like a blue thin veil over the snowy summit of the
Mountain. A long band of white mackerel-back clouds
garnished the sky. They came at length to Deacon Hadlock's
Pasture. Here the scattered trees were all foaming
with ice, and the rain having candied them over, trunk and
branch, they shone like so many great candelebras; and
the surface of the lot, in all its extent, burnt and glared in
the singeing sunbeams. Here also they encountered a troop
of boys and girls coasting. Some were coming up the hill,
goring and scranching the crust with their iron corks, others
wheeling about and skimmering away through the bright
air, the ups and downs forming a perfect line of revolution.
Margaret and Obed, joining the current, mounted their
sleds, and scudded away down the glassy slope, with a
rapidity that would almost take one's breath away.

At the bottom of the Pasture, surmounting the fence, was
a high envelope of snow; over which some of the sleds

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passed into the road beyond, some came to top and halted,
some with a graceful recurve turned off aslant, while others
with less momentum going up half way ran backwards, and
haply striking an obstruction, reared, and threw their riders
heels over head. Margaret elevated in feeling, and supported
withal by a very spirited sled, rushed into the thickest
of the sport, dashed down the hill, made a graceful return
on this terrace and mingled with the moiling merryhearted
ups. There were trees scattered through the lot,
and small rocks just rounded off with snow, and larger ones
with a pitch in front, and diversities of soil that gave a wavy
huckle-backed character to the entire field. The boys wore
steeple-crowned caps like Obed's; the girls were dressed
both in short and long gowns. Their sleds were adorned
with brave and emulous names,—Washington, Napoleon,
Spitfire, Racer, Swallow. The downs whooped by, curvetting
among the trees, leaping from rocks, jouncing over
hollows. They took it in all ways, astride, kneeling, breastwise,
haunch-wise. It was a youthful, exhilarating, cock-brained
winter, New England dytharimb.

“This is music,” said one boy.

“Something of the broomstick order—a fellow gets
thwacked most to death,” replied a second.

“There goes Judah Weeks, his trotters are getting up
in the world,” cried a third.

“Old Had is hard upon him,” rejoined the second speaker.

“He always is upon the boys, but we get some fun out
of him, don't we?” added the first.

“Spitfire is as skittish as the Deacon's sorrel colt; Jude
might have known he would have got cast,” interposed the
third.

“I declare, how they ache,” said Judah, blowing his red
snow-dripping fingers, as he joined the ups.

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