the gentle sway of her Boston rocking-chair, passed to and fro before
the lamp by which she was sewing--cutting off the light from some
object, and then allowing it to flow back again--giving a sort of
animation to the stillness, peculiarly cheerful.

Now and then Jane Chester would lift her eyes to the clock, which,
with a tiny looking-glass, framed in the mahogany beneath its dial,
stood directly before her upon the mantle-piece. As the pointer
approached the half hour before midnight, she laid the child's dress
which she had been mending upon the little oblong candle-stand that
held her lamp, and put a shovelful of coal on the grate of her little
cooking-stove. Then she took a tea-kettle bright as silver from the
stove, and went into a closet room at hand, where you could hear the
clink of thin ice as it flowed from the water-pail into the
tea-kettle.

When Mrs. Chester entered the room again with the kettle in her hand,
a soft glow was on her cheek, and it would be difficult to imagine
a lovelier or more cheerful face than hers. You could see by the
rising color and the sweet expression of her mouth, that her heart
was beginning to beat in a sort of fond tumult, as the time of her
husband's return drew near. The fire was darting in a thousand bright
flashes, through the black mass that had just been cast upon it,
shooting out here and there a gleam of gold on the polished blackness
of the stove, and curling up in little prismatic eddies around the
tea-kettle as she placed it on the grate. The lamp, clean and bright
as crystal could be made, was urged to a more brilliant flame by the
point of her scissors, and then with another glance at the clock,
the pretty housekeeper sat down in her chair again, and with one
finely-shaped foot laced in its trim gaiter resting upon the stove