She drew her coat closer about her
shoulders and stepped from the porch. The snow had ceased to fall, and
the wind had quieted its turbulent raging. Very cold and quiet, the
whole white night-world seemed. Of a sudden, the solitude was pierced by
a hoarse sound from a sleepy fowl in the great barn below in the
meadows. A night bird uttered a shrill, belligerent cry and sank to
silence in his tree top. Tess turned her head sharply. These life-sounds
out of the dusky beyond came from her friends. She wasn't afraid, only
cold and chilled to her body's depths. Slowly, she went down the drifted
driveway to the Trumansburg road and turned lakeward. She wondered if it
was safe to return home cross-lots when she was so tired. It was shorter
through the fields, but her legs seemed almost unable to bear up her
weight in the deep snow.

At the top of the hill, opposite the Stebbins' homestead, she crouched
down to rest a moment. Once, she thought she heard a horse. It might
have been, but if so, the animal had passed, for no longer could she
hear the thud of hoofs upon the snow road. Then, something touched her,
and she turned her eyes upward. There, in the sky, was a moon--Was it
her moon, that pale riding thing, taking its way through the white
clouds? How cold it looked, and how cold it was! She shivered, settled a
little in her coat and closed her eyes. A moment later, something
brushed her hand. Slowly, the long red-brown lashes lifted and the
red-brown eyes settled upon a figure bending over her, a figure, white
like one of Mother Moll's conjured ghosts. Tessibel wanted to go to
sleep. Why had the night stranger touched her, just then? Oh, she was
out in the snow. A person ought never to lie down in the snow. Daddy
Skinner had told her so many times. She mustn't sleep. She must get up
instantly--but--her legs were too stiff, too difficult to move. Then,
the figure faded slowly from her vision. How heavy her chest felt. A
moonbeam lay slant-wise across it. That couldn't be so heavy, just a bit
of the moonlight. Why, of course, something else was cradled in the
white beam. Tess looked closer. A babe, as fair as an unblemished rose
leaf, lay straight across her breast and considered her with
unfathomable, interested eyes.... It was Boy--her Boy--she had him back
again. Then, he hadn't been put in a little box in the ground beside
Daddy Skinner. She managed to raise one arm and drop it across the small
body. How lovely he was,