peculiar to the New England winter in the hill country, and is always either very depressing or very stimulating to the soul.  Dreamy and inert and phlegmatic people shiver and huddle, see only the sombreness, and find the winter one long imprisonment in the dark.  But to a joyous, brisk, sanguine soul, the clear, crisp, cold air is like wine; and the whiteness and sparkle and shine of the snow are like martial music, a constant excitement and spell.

Mercy’s soul thrilled within her with new delight and impulse each day.  The winter had always oppressed her before.  On the seashore, winter means raw cold, a pale, gray, angry ocean, fierce winds, and scanty wet snows.  This brilliant, frosty air, so still and dry that it never seemed cold, this luxuriance of snow piled soft and high as if it meant shelter and warmth,—­as indeed it does,—­were very wonderful to Mercy.  She would have liked to be out of doors all day long:  it seemed to her a fairer than summer-time.  She followed the partially broken trails of the wood-cutters far into the depths of the forests, and found there on sunny days, in sheltered spots, where the feet of the men and horses and the runners of the heavy sledges had worn away the snow, green mosses and glossy ferns and shining clumps of the hepatica.  It was a startling sight on a December day, when the snow was lying many inches deep, to come suddenly on Mercy walking in the middle of the road, her hands filled with green ferns and mosses and vines.  There were three different species of ground-pine in these woods, and hepatica and pyrola and wintergreen, and thickets of laurel.  What wealth for a lover of wild, out-door things!  Each day Mercy bore home new treasures, until the house was almost as green and fragrant as a summer wood.  Day after day, Mrs. White, from her point of observation at her window, watched the lithe young figure coming down the road, bearing her sheaves of boughs and vines, sometimes on her shoulder, as lightly and gracefully as a peasant girl of Italy might bear her poised basket of grapes.  Gradually a deep wonder took possession of the lonely old woman’s soul.

“Whatever can she do with all that green stuff?” she thought.  “She’s carried in enough to trim the ’Piscopal church twice over.”

At last she shared her perplexity with Marty.

“Marty,” said she one day, “have you ever seen Mrs. Philbrick come into the house without somethin’ green in her hands?  What do you suppose she’s goin’ to do with it all?”

“Lord knows,” answered Marty.  “I’ve been a speckkerlatin’ about that very thing myself.  They can’t be a brewin’ beer this time o’ year; but I see her yesterday with her hands full o’ pyroly.”

“I wish you would make an errand in there, Marty,” said Mrs. White, “and see if you can any way find out what it’s all for.  She’s carried in pretty near a grove of pine-trees, I should say.”

The willing Marty went, and returned with a most surprising tale.  Every room was wreathed with green vines.  There were evergreen trees in boxes; the window-seats were filled with pots of green things growing; waving masses of ferns hung down from brackets on the walls.