that occasion, a visit to
Hogson's Corner, an old meeting-house near the bay-side, twenty miles
distant. His mother woke him at an early hour, and, while he
breakfasted, the gray pony Bob came to the door in the "sulky." His
mother bade him to be a good boy, and kissed him; he took his seat
upon a stool at his father's feet, and watched the stone parsonage
fade quickly out of sight. The last houses of the town vanished; they
passed some squalid huts of free negroes; and when, after an hour,
they came to a grim, solitary hill, the snow began to fall. It beat
down very fast, whitening the frozen furrows in the fields, making
pyramids of the charred stumps, and bleaching the sinuous
"worm-fences" which bordered the road. After a while, they found a
gate built across the way, and Paul leaped out to open it. The snow
was deep on the other side, and the little fellow's strength was taxed
to push it back; but he succeeded, and his father applauded him. Then
there were other gates; for there were few public highways here, and
the routes led through private fields. It seemed that he had opened a
great many gates before they came to the forest, and then Paul wrapped
his chilled wet feet in the thick buffalo hide, and watched the dreary
stretches of the pines moan by, the flakes still falling, and the
wheels of the sulky dragging in the drifts. The road was very lonely;
his father hummed snatches of hymns as they went, and the little boy
shaped grotesque figures down the dim aisles of the woods, and
wondered how it would be with travellers lost in their depths. He was
not sorry when they reached the meeting-house--a black old pile of
planks, propped upon logs, with a long shelter-roof for horses down
the side of the graveyard. A couple of sleighs, a rough-covered
wagon, called a "dearbourn," and several saddled horses, were tied
beneath the roof. Two very aged negroes were seen coming up one of the
cross-roads, and the shining, surging Chesapeake, bearing a few pale
sails, was visible in the other direction. Some boors were gossiping
in the churchyard, slashing their boots with their riding-whips; one
lean, solemn man came out to welcome the preacher, addressing him as
"Brother Bates;" and another led the sulky into the wagon-shed, and
treated Bob to some ears of corn, which he needed very much.

Then they all repaired to the church, which looked inside like a
great barn. The beams and shingles were bare; some swallows in the
eav