and attacked the "cakes and things"
with no misgivings.

After a most successful and most learned tea a something happened which,
small as I was, never quite shook itself out of my memory.

To us at parley in an arbour over the high road, there entered,
slouching into view, a dingy tramp, satellited by a frowsy woman and a
pariah dog; and, catching sight of us, he set up his professional whine;
and I looked at my friend with the heartiest compassion, for I knew
well from Martha--it was common talk--that at this time of day he was
certainly and surely penniless. Morn by morn he started forth with
pockets lined; and each returning evening found him with never a sou.
All this he proceeded to explain at length to the tramp, courteously
and even shamefacedly, as one who was in the wrong; and at last the
gentleman of the road, realising the hopelessness of his case, set to
and cursed him with gusto, vocabulary, and abandonment. He reviled
his eyes, his features, his limbs, his profession, his relatives and
surroundings; and then slouched off, still oozing malice and filth. We
watched the party to a turn in the road, where the woman, plainly weary,
came to a stop. Her lord, after some conventional expletives demanded of
him by his position, relieved her of her bundle, and caused her to hang
on his arm with a certain rough kindness of tone, and in action even a
dim approach to tenderness; and the dingy dog crept up for one lick at
her hand.

"See," said my friend, bearing somewhat on my shoulder, "how this
strange thing, this love of ours, lives and shines out in the
unlikeliest of places! You have been in the fields in early morning?
Barren acres, all! But only stoop--catch the light thwartwise--and all
is a silver network of gossamer! So the fairy filaments of this strange
thing underrun and link together the whole world. Yet it is not the old
imperious god of the fatal bow--{GREEK}not that--nor even the placid
respectable {GREEK}--but something still unnamed, perhaps more
mysterious, more divine! Only one must stoop to see it, old fellow, one
must stoop!"

The dew was falling, the dusk closing, as I trotted briskly homewards
down the road. Lonely spaces everywhere, above and around. Only Hesperus
hung in the sky, solitary, pure, ineffably far-drawn and remote; yet
infinitely heartening, somehow, in his valorous isolation.

SNOWBOUND

Twelfth-night had come and gone, and life next morning seemed a trifle
flat an