“I thank Thee,” baring his head and bending it,—­the words died in an awestruck whisper in his heart,—­“for Thy great glory, O Lord!”

* * * * *

“Will you come a little farther?  Let a few months slip by, and let us see what a March day is in the old Pennsylvania hills.  The horrors of the war have not crept hither yet, into these hill-homesteads.  Never were crops richer than those of ’61 and ’62, nor prices better.  So the barns were full to bursting through the autumn of those years, and the fires were big enough to warm you to your very marrow in winter.

Even now, if young Corporal Simpson, or Joe Hainer, or any other of the neighbors’ boys come home wounded, it only spices the gossip for the apple-butter-parings or spelling-matches.  Then the men, being Democrats, are reconciled to the ruin of the country, because it has been done by the Republicans; and the women can construct secret hiding-places in the meat-cellar for the dozen silver teaspoons and tea-pot, in dread of Stuart’s cavalry.  Altogether, the war gives quite a zest to life up here.  Then, in these low-hill valleys of the Alleghanies the sun pours its hottest, most life-breeding glow, and even the wintry wind puts all its vigor into the blast, knowing that there are no lachrymose, whey-skinned city-dyspeptics to inhale it, but full-breasted, strong-muscled women and men,—­with narrow brains, maybe, but big, healthy hearts, and physique to match.  Very much the same type of animal and moral organization, as well as natural, you would have found before the war began, ran through the valley of Pennsylvania and Virginia.

One farm, eight or ten miles from the village where the Gurneys lived, might be taken as a specimen of these old homesteads.  It lay in a sort of meadow-cove, fenced in with low, rolling hills that were wooded with oaks on the summits,—­sheep-cots, barns, well-to-do plum and peach orchards creeping up the sides,—­a creek binding it in with a broad, flashing band.  The water was frozen on this March evening:  it had plenty of time to freeze, and stay there altogether, in fact, it moved so slowly, knowing it had got into comfortable quarters.  There was just enough cold crispiness in the air to-night to make the two fat cows move faster into the stable, with smoking breath, to bring out a crow of defiance from the chickens huddling together on the roost; it spread, too, a white rime over the windows, shining red in the sinking sun.  When the sun was down, the nipping northeaster grew sharper, swept about the little valley, rattled the bare-limbed trees, blew boards off the corn-crib that Doctor Blecker had built only last week, tweaked his nose and made his eyes water as he came across the field clapping his hands to make the blood move faster, and, in short, acted as if the whole of that nook in the hills belonged to it in perpetuity.  But the house, square, brick, solid-seated, began to glow red and warm out of every