l leave the village gossips to beat the air with their idle
speculations.

CHAPTER XIX.

I could endure
Chains nowhere patiently: and chains at home
Where I am free by birthright, not at all.

COWPER.

Bright and beautiful broke the morning after that night of storm. The
weather had cleared up towards midnight, and when the rejoicing sun
surveyed the scene, his golden glances fell on a wide expanse of pure,
unsullied white. A slight breeze had arisen, which, gently agitating
the bent and laden boughs of the evergreens, shook off the fleecy
adornment that fell like blossoms from the trees. The air was soft
and almost balmy, as is not unfrequently the case even in "the dead
of winter" in our variable climate, lovelier and dearer for its very
variableness, like a capricious beauty, whose smile is the more prized
for the pout that precedes it. It was a day to seduce the old man into
the sunshine in the stoop on the south side of the house, and to bring
out the girls and young men, and swift trotting horses and pungs and
jingling bells in gay confusion in the streets.

In the course of the forenoon, a bright crimson sleigh, the bottom
filled with clean straw, and the seats covered with bear and buffalo
robes, the horse ornamented around the neck and back with strings of
bells that jangled sweet music every step he took, drove up to the
door of Judge Bernard. A young man stepped out, whom we recognize as
Pownal. He entered the house, and in a few minutes returned with Anne
Bernard, muffled in cloak and boa, and carrying a muff upon her arm.
Health glowed in her cheek and happiness lighted up her eyes. Pownal
assisted her into the sleigh, and carefully disposing the robes about
her, took his seat by her side and drove off.

They drove at first into the older part of the town, as yet
undescribed by us, nor do we now intend a description, save that the
road was wide, and a considerable part of the way bordered by elms and
maples, glorious with beauty in summer, but now standing like mourners
shivering in the wintry air, and as they passed hailed with special
looks and expressions of admiration those two fraternal elms, towering
over all, like patriarchs of the vegetable world, which, once seen,
none will forget.

"Huge trunks, and each particular trunk a growth
Of intertwisted fibres, serpentine,
Upcoiling, and inveterately convolved--
Nor uninformed with Phantasy and