Soon the old house was quiet.  The wind had utterly ceased.  I opened the door a moment, and looked on the white, still world without.  The stars glittered frostily through the rifts in the clouds.  Schunemunk Mountain was a shadow along the western horizon, and the eastern highlands banked up and blended with the clouds.  Nature has its restless moods, its storms and passions, like human life; but there are times of tranquillity and peace, even in March.  How different was this scene from the aspect of our city street when I had taken my farewell look at a late hour the previous night!  No grand sweeping outlines there, no deep quiet and peace, soothing and at the same time uplifting the mind.  Even at midnight there is an uneasy fretting in city life—­some one not at rest, and disturbing the repose of others.

I stole silently through the house.  Here, too, all seemed in accord with nature.  The life of a good old man had quietly ceased in this home; new, hopeful life was beginning.  Evil is everywhere in the world, but it seemed to me that we had as safe a nook as could be found.

CHAPTER XIV

SELF-DENIAL AND ITS REWARD

I remember little that followed until I was startled out of my chair by a loud knocking.  The sunlight was streaming in at the window and John Jones’s voice was at the door.

“I think we have all overslept,” I said, as I admitted him.

“Not a bit of it.  Every wink you’ve had after such a day as yesterday is like money put in the bank.  But the sleighing is better now than it will be later in the day.  The sun’ll be pretty powerful by noon, and the snow’ll soon be slush.  Now’s your chance to get your traps up in a hurry.  I can have a two-hoss sled ready in half an hour, and if you say so I can hire a big sleigh of a neighbor, and we’ll have everything here by dinner-time.  After you get things snug, you won’t care if the bottom does fall out of the roads for a time.  Well, you have had to rough it.  Merton might have come and stayed with us.”

“Oh, I’m all right,” said the boy, rubbing his eyes open as he rose from the floor, at the same time learning from stiff joints that a carpet is not a mattress.

“Nothing would suit me better, Mr. Jones, than your plan of prompt action, and I’m the luckiest man in the world in having such a long-headed, fore-handed neighbor to start with.  I know you’ll make a good bargain for the other team, and before I sleep to-night I wish to square up for everything.  I mean at least to begin business in this way at Maizeville.”

“Oh, go slow, go slow!” said Mr. Jones.  “The town will mob you if they find you’ve got ready money in March.  John junior will be over with a pot of coffee and a jug of milk in a few minutes, and we’ll be off sharp.”

There was a patter of feet overhead, and soon Bobsey came tearing down, half wild with excitement over the novelty of everything.  He started for the door as if he were going head first into the snow.