the well, the stable, and the barn. Once a day, most often after
breakfast, Jim Weatherby appeared, smiling gaily beneath his
powdering of snow; and sometimes, in defiance of Cynthia, he
would take Lila for a sleigh-ride, from which she would return
blossoming like a rose.

Mrs. Blake, from her tester bed, complained bitterly of the cold,
and drew from the increasing severity of the winters, which she
declared became more unbearable each year, warrant for her belief
in the gradual "decline of the world as a dwelling-place."

"You may say what you please, Tucker," she remarked one morning
when she had awakened with an appetite to find that her eggs had
frozen in the kitchen, "but you can hardly be so barefaced as to
compliment this weather. I'm sure I never felt anything like it
when I was young."

"Well, at least I have a roof over my head now, and I didn't when
I marched to Romney with old Stonewall," remarked Tucker from the
hearth, where he was roasting an apple before the big logs.
"Many's the morning I waked then with the snow frozen stiff all
over me, and I had to crack through it before I could get up."

The old lady made a peevish gesture.

"It may sound ungrateful," she returned, "but I'm sometimes
tempted to wish that you had never marched to Romney, or that
General Jackson had been considerate enough to choose a milder
spell. I really believe when you come to die you will console
yourself with the recollection of something worse that happened