That Leila should have acquired interest in gowns seemed to him unlike that fearless playmate.  He learned that the rules of the school forbade the writing of letters except to parents and near relatives.  He was now to write to Leila the first letter he had written since his laborious epistles to his mother when at school.  His compositions seemed to Rivers childlike long after he showed notable competence in speech.

“DEAR LEILA:  It is very hard that you cannot write to me.  We are all well here except Lucy, who is lame.  It isn’t very much.

“Of course you have heard about our good old Josiah.  Isn’t that slave law wicked?  Westways is angry and all turned round for Fremont.  Mr. Grace has been ill, and Uncle Jim is putting a roof on his chapel.  Josiah left me his traps when he ran away.  He meant to make you a muskrat skin bag.  I found four in his traps, and I have caught four more, and when Mrs. Lamb makes a bag of them, I am to have for it a silver clasp which belonged to Great-grandmother Penhallow.  No girl will have one like that.  It was on account of Josiah the town will not vote for Buchanan.

“I wish I had asked you for a lock of your hair.  I remember how it looked on the snow when Billy upset us.”—­

He had found his letter-writing hard work, and let it alone for a time.  Before he finished it, he had more serious news to add.

The autumnal sunset of the year, the red and gold of maple, oak and sassafras, was new to the boy who had spent so many years in Europe, and more wonderful was it when in this late October on the uplands there fell softly upon the glowing colours of the woods a light covering of early snow.  Once seen it is a spectacle never to be forgotten, and he had the gift of being charmed by the scenic ingenuities of nature.

The scripture reading was over and he was thinking late in the evening of what he had seen, when his aunt said, “Goodnight, John—­bed-time,” and went up the stairway.  John lay quiet, with closed eyes, seeing the sunlit snow lightly dusted on the red and yellows of the forest.

About eleven his uncle came from the library.  “What, you scamp!—­up so late!  I meant to mail this letter to-day; run down and mail it.  It ought to go when Billy takes the letters to Westways Crossing early to-morrow.  I will wait up for you.  Now use those long legs and hurry.”

John took his cap and set off, liking the run over the snow, which was light and no longer falling.  He raced down the avenue and climbed the gate, thinking of Leila.  He dropped the letter into the post-office box, and decided to return by a short way through the Penhallow woods which faced the town.  He moved eastward, climbed the fence, and stood still.  He was some two hundred yards from the parsonage.  His attention was arrested by a dull glow behind the house.  He ran towards it as it flared upward a broad rush of flame, brilliantly lighting the expanse of snow and sending long prancing shafts of shadow through the woods as it struck on the tall spruces.  Shouting, “Fire!  Fire!” John came nearer.