It was not strange that on this day there should come into the hearts of both Jacob and Ruth, his wife, sad and dismal memories.  Still his gaze wandered silently about the room, and she plied unceasingly her stiff, bright knitting-needles.  One would have thought her a figure of stone, sitting so pale and bolt upright, but for the activity of the patiently industrious fingers.

Presently Jacob spoke.

“Ruth,” he said, “it is a bitter time for us, and we are sore oppressed; but what does the Psalmist say to such poor, worn-out creatures as we are?  ’The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord, and he delighteth in his way.  Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down:  for the Lord upholdeth him with his hand.  I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread.’  Wife, we are not forsaken of the Lord, although all earthly things seem to go wrong with us.”

She made no verbal reply; but there was a nervous flutter in the poor, wan fingers, as she still plied the needles, and two large tears rolled silently down her checks and fell upon the white kerchief she wore over her shoulders.

“We have still a house over our heads,” continued Jacob, “and wherewithal to keep ourselves fed and clothed and warmed; we have but a few years more to live; let us thank God for what blessings He has yet vouchsafed us.”

She arose without a word, stiff, angular, ungainly, and they knelt together on the floor.

Meanwhile the snow fell thicker and faster without, and blew in fierce clouds against the windows.  The wind was rising and gaining power, and it whistled wrathfully about the house, howling as in bitter mockery at the scene within.  Sometimes it swelled into wild laughter, and again dropped into low and plaintive wailings.  It was very dismal out in the cold, and hardly more cheerful in the warm sitting-room, where those two jaded souls knelt in earnest prayer.

* * * * *

A railway-train was fast in a snow-bank.  There it had stuck, unable to move either backward or forward, since nine o’clock on Wednesday evening; it was now Thursday morning, the snow was still falling, and still seemed likely to fall, blocking up more and more the passage of the unfortunate train.  There were two locomotives, with a huge snow-plough on the forward one, a baggage and express-car, and four cars filled with passengers.  Two hundred people, all anxious, most of them grumbling, were detained there prisoners, snow-bound and helpless.  It was a hard case, for they were more than two miles distant—­with three feet depth of snow between—­from the nearest house.  The nearest village was five miles away at least.

It was Thanksgiving-Day, too, and they had almost all of them “lotted” upon a New-England Thanksgiving-dinner with old friends, brothers, fathers, mothers, and grandparents.  And there they were, without so much as a ration of crackers and cheese.