for Tom in her hand, the yarn all tangled and broken.  Ready was by her knees, winking sleepily.  The old dog was growing surly with his years, as we said:  Jem remembered when he used to romp and tussle with him, but that was long ago:  he lay in the chimney-corner always now, growling at Martha herself even, if her singing or laugh disturbed his nap.  But when these strange moods came on her, Jem noticed that the yellow old beast seemed conscious of it sooner than any one beside, crept up to her, stood by her:  that she clung to him, not to her children.  He was licking her hand now, his red eye, drowsy though it was, watching her as if danger were nigh.  A dog you would not slight.  Inside of his hot-headedness and courage there was that reserved look in his eyes, which some men and brutes have, that says they have a life of their own to live separate from yours, and they know it.  The boy crept up jealously, thrust his numb fingers into his mother’s hand.  She started, looking down.

“It grows into a clear winter’s night, Jemmy,” trying to speak carelessly.

So they stood looking out together.  The fire had burned down into a great bed of flameless coals, the kitchen glowed warm and red, throwing out even a patch of ruddy light on the snow-covered yard without.  A cold, but comfortable home-look out there:  the bit of garden, fences, cow-house, pump, heaped with the snow; old Dolly asleep in her stable:  Jem wrapped himself in his mother’s skirt with a sudden relish of warm snugness.  What made her pull at Ready’s neck with such nervous jerks?  She saw nothing beyond?  Jem stood on tiptoe, peering out.  There was no hint of the hailstorm they had prophesied, in the night:  the moon stood lower now in the sky, filling the air with a yellow, frosty brilliance.  Yet something strangely cold, dead, unfamiliar, in the night yonder, chilled him.  Neither sound nor motion there; hills, river, and fields, distinct, sharply cut in pallor, but ghost-like:  it made him afraid.  There seemed to be no end of them; the hills to the north ran low, and beyond them he could see more blue and cold and distance, going on—­who could tell where? to the eternal ice and snow, it might be.  She felt it, he knew.  The boy was frightened, tried to pull her back to the fire, when something he saw outside made him stop suddenly.  Shag’s Hill, the nearest of the ledge to the house, is a low, narrow cone, with a sharp rim against the sky; the moon had sunk half behind it, lighting the surface of drifted snow which faced them.  Across this there suddenly fell a long, uncertain shadow, which belonged neither to bush nor tree:  it might be the flicker of a cloud; or a man, passing across the top of the hill, would make it.  It was nothing; some of the coal-diggers from the Point going home; he pulled at her petticoat again.

“Come to the fire, dear,” he said, looking up.

Her whole face and neck were hot; she laughed and trembled as if some spasm were upon her.