desk. "Stop fiddling
now, Jim," she said, solemnly. Mrs. Otis spoke with more direct
authority in religious matters than in others. She felt herself well
backed by the spiritual law. Jim finished the tune he was playing and
lowered his fiddle from his shoulder. His mother found the place in
the Bible, and the holy words were on her tongue when there was a
sharp clash of sleigh-bells close under the window.

"Somebody's drove into the yard!" cried Mrs. Otis. "Who do you s'pose
'tis this time of night?"

"Hullo!" shouted a man's voice, hoarsely, and Jim shouted "Hullo!" in
response, and started towards the door.

"Ask who's there before you open the door," said the mother,
anxiously. She stood listening a moment after Jim had gone; then she
caught her shawl from a peg, put it over her head, and followed
him--she was so afraid some harm would come to her son.

The outer door was open, and before it was drawn up a sleigh and a
great, high-shouldered, snorting and pawing horse. In the sleigh was
a man muffled in furs like an Eskimo, leaning out and questioning
Jim.

"When did she come?" asked the man.

"About five o'clock," answered Jim.

Then Mrs. Otis understood that they were talking about the girl in
her spare-chamber, and she interposed, standing in the doorway. "She
was just about tuckered out, what with the cold and that awful
tramp," said she. "She most ought to have rode over." Mrs. Otis's
voice was soft and conciliatory.

"We didn't know she was coming," replied the man in the sleigh,
courteously, "or we should not have let her walk so far on such a
day."

"Be you her brother?" questioned Mrs. Otis.

"Yes. I'm her brother Eugene."

"And you drove over to see where she was?"

"Yes; we've been very anxious."

"Well, you can be easy about her for to-night," said Mrs. Otis.
"She's tucked up nice and warm in my spare-chamber bed, and I give
her a tumbler of my brandy cordial, and I guess she's sound asleep."

"He wants to take her home to-night, mother," said Jim, and there was
a curious appeal in his tone.

Mrs. Otis, standing there on the door-step in the freezing moonlight,
turned quickly upon the man in the sleigh, and all the soft
conciliation was gone from her voice. "You ain't plannin' to take
that girl way home to Ware Centre to-night?" said she.

"Father sent me for her," replied Eugene Hautville.

"Well, she ain't goin' a step!"

"Her father will expect me to bring her," said Eugene,