I was right. It was the winter which had set in. All that day, and all the next day, it snowed without stopping. The village seemed slowly, steadily sinking in a silvery morass; bush after bush, stone wall after stone-wall, fence after fence, landmark after landmark, disappeared, until the vas ttracts of open country lay as unbroken as an Arctic Ocean, and the very chimney-tops of the town looked like the heads of hopelessly overwhelmed travelers. On the morning of the second day, Dr. Miller came in, trampling, puffing, and shaking off snow from shoulders, pockets, beard, everywhere; he shed the powdery avalanches as a pine-tree sheds them when it is rocked by a sudden wind.
"Ha, boys," he exclaimed; "no hunting for precious stones on Black Ledge this year! We 're snowed up for three months at least. How 'll you youngsters like that? And how 's the ankle, Pussy," he said, in a softer tone, turning to Ally with such a smile as seldom came on his rugged face. A little bed had been brought into the sitting-room and set across the south window. In this Ally lay, under a marvelous coverlet which the parishioners had presented to Mrs. Allen at the last Donation Party. It was called the "Rising Sun" pattern, the villagers never having heard of the word Aurora. But there was something pathetic in the embryonic conception which these hard-working New England women had stitched into their bed-quilt of flaming Turkey red and white. A scarlet sun in
