carts, unless, indeed, the little news-carrier should fail to board us with the world’s daily bulletin, or our next-door neighbor should be deterred from coming to sit by the blazing, excited fire, and interchange the trifling, harmless gossip of the day.  The feeling of seclusion on such a day is sweet, but the true friend who does brave the storm and come is welcomed with a sort of enthusiasm that his arrival in pleasant weather would never excite.  The snow-bound in their Arctic hulk are glad to see even a wandering Esquimau.

On such a day I recall the great snow-storms on the northern New England hills, which lasted for a week with no cessation, with no sunrise or sunset, and no observation at noon; and the sky all the while dark with the driving snow, and the whole world full of the noise of the rioting Boreal forces; until the roads were obliterated, the fences covered, and the snow was piled solidly above the first-story windows of the farmhouse on one side, and drifted before the front door so high that egress could only be had by tunneling the bank.

After such a battle and siege, when the wind fell and the sun struggled out again, the pallid world lay subdued and tranquil, and the scattered dwellings were not unlike wrecks stranded by the tempest and half buried in sand.  But when the blue sky again bent over all, the wide expanse of snow sparkled like diamond-fields, and the chimney signal-smokes could be seen, how beautiful was the picture!  Then began the stir abroad, and the efforts to open up communication through roads, or fields, or wherever paths could be broken, and the ways to the meeting-house first of all.  Then from every house and hamlet the men turned out with shovels, with the patient, lumbering oxen yoked to the sleds, to break the roads, driving into the deepest drifts, shoveling and shouting as if the severe labor were a holiday frolic, the courage and the hilarity rising with the difficulties encountered; and relief parties, meeting at length in the midst of the wide white desolation, hailed each other as chance explorers in new lands, and made the whole country-side ring with the noise of their congratulations.  There was as much excitement and healthy stirring of the blood in it as in the Fourth of July, and perhaps as much patriotism.  The boy saw it in dumb show from the distant, low farmhouse window, and wished he were a man.  At night there were great stories of achievement told by the cavernous fireplace; great latitude was permitted in the estimation of the size of particular drifts, but never any agreement was reached as to the “depth on a level.”  I have observed since that people are quite as apt to agree upon the marvelous and the exceptional as upon simple facts.

V

By the firelight and the twilight, the Young Lady is finishing a letter to Herbert,—­writing it, literally, on her knees, transforming thus the simple deed into an act of devotion.  Mandeville says that it is bad for her eyes, but the sight of it is worse for his eyes.  He begins to doubt the wisdom of reliance upon that worn apothegm about absence conquering love.