ignorance, enfold me and spare me! All happiness that I can control or
conjecture, come to me and console me!"

And over herself she dropped a vesture of joy to greet him when he
should step forth.

It was a pleasant afternoon to be out of doors and to go about what
they had planned; the ground was scarcely frozen, there was no wind,
and the whole sky was overcast with thin gray cloud that betrayed no
movement. Under this still dome of silvery-violet light stretched the
winter land; it seemed ready and waiting for its great festival.

The lawn sloped away from the house to a brook at the bottom, and
beyond the brook the ground rose to a woodland hilltop. Across the
distance you distinguished there the familiar trees of blue-grass
pastures: white ash and black ash; white oak and red oak; white walnut
and black walnut; and the scaly-bark hickory in his roughness and the
sycamore with her soft leoparded limbs. The black walnut and the
hickory brought to mind autumn days when children were abroad,
ploughing the myriad leaves with booted feet and gathering their
harvest of nuts--primitive food-storing instinct of the human animal
still rampant in modern childhood: these nuts to be put away in garret
and cellar and but scantily eaten until Christmas came.

Out of this woods on the afternoon air sounded the muffled strokes of
an axe cutting down a black walnut partly dead; and when this fell, it
would bring down with it bunches of mistletoe, those white pearls of
the forest mounted on branching jade. To-morrow eager fingers would be
gathering the mistletoe to decorate the house. Near by was a thicket
of bramble and cane where, out of reach of cattle, bushes of holly