Jim continued to fiddle, touching the strings as if his fingers were muffled with down.  The wind whistled more loudly than his fiddle; it had increased, and the cold with it.  Some of Mrs. Otis’s crocks froze on the hearth that night.  No such cold had been known in Vermont for years.  The frost on the window-panes thickened—­the light of the full moon could not penetrate them; all over the house were heard sounds like those on a straining ship at sea.  The old timbers cracked now and then with a report like a pistol.  “It’s a dreadful night,” said Mrs. Otis, and as she spoke the returning wind struck the house, and she gasped as if it had in truth taken her breath away.

A few minutes before nine o’clock Mrs. Otis put away her knitting-work and got the great Bible off the desk.  “Stop fiddling now, Jim,” she said, solemnly.  Mrs. Otis spoke with more direct authority in religious matters than in others.  She felt herself well backed by the spiritual law.  Jim finished the tune he was playing and lowered his fiddle from his shoulder.  His mother found the place in the Bible, and the holy words were on her tongue when there was a sharp clash of sleigh-bells close under the window.

“Somebody’s drove into the yard!” cried Mrs. Otis.  “Who do you s’pose ’tis this time of night?”

“Hullo!” shouted a man’s voice, hoarsely, and Jim shouted “Hullo!” in response, and started towards the door.

“Ask who’s there before you open the door,” said the mother, anxiously.  She stood listening a moment after Jim had gone; then she caught her shawl from a peg, put it over her head, and followed him—­she was so afraid some harm would come to her son.

The outer door was open, and before it was drawn up a sleigh and a great, high-shouldered, snorting and pawing horse.  In the sleigh was a man muffled in furs like an Eskimo, leaning out and questioning Jim.

“When did she come?” asked the man.

“About five o’clock,” answered Jim.

Then Mrs. Otis understood that they were talking about the girl in her spare-chamber, and she interposed, standing in the doorway.  “She was just about tuckered out, what with the cold and that awful tramp,” said she.  “She most ought to have rode over.”  Mrs. Otis’s voice was soft and conciliatory.

“We didn’t know she was coming,” replied the man in the sleigh, courteously, “or we should not have let her walk so far on such a day.”

“Be you her brother?” questioned Mrs. Otis.

“Yes.  I’m her brother Eugene.”

“And you drove over to see where she was?”

“Yes; we’ve been very anxious.”

“Well, you can be easy about her for to-night,” said Mrs. Otis.  “She’s tucked up nice and warm in my spare-chamber bed, and I give her a tumbler of my brandy cordial, and I guess she’s sound asleep.”

“He wants to take her home to-night, mother,” said Jim, and there was a curious appeal in his tone.