feelings. She
had heard it for years, and, in truth, was as glad of her vacation as
any of her girls.

A journey alone in a new country, with the beauty of the autumn all
gone, and the rigors of a New England winter already beginning to show
themselves, made Marion, self-reliant as she usually was, not a little
timid as she saw the tall academy building lost behind the hills,
between which the cars were bearing her on to New Hampshire. A
homesick feeling took possession of her, and a dread that she might
find Kate Underwood's tableaux a reality when she should reach her old
aunt in the mountain-girded farmhouse.

Three hours' ride through a bare and uninteresting country brought her
to Belden.

The day was extremely cold here. The snow, which had seemed to her
very deep at Montrose, lay piled up in huge drifts, not a fence nor a
shrub to be seen. All around were spurs of the White Mountains, white,
literally, as she looked up to them, from their base to their summit.
There were great brown trees clinging stiff and frozen to their steep
sides; sharp-pointed rocks, raising their great heads here and there
from among the trees.

Majestic, awful, solemn they looked to this prairie child, as she
stood on the cold platform of the little station gazing up at them.

A voice said behind her, startling her,--

"You'd better come in, marm. It's what we call a terrible cold day for
Thanksgiving week. Come in, and warm you."

Marion turned, to see a man in a buffalo overcoat, with whiskers the
same color as the fur, eyes that looked the same, a big red nose, a
buffalo fur cap pulled well down over his ears, with mittens to
match.

He stood in an open door, to which he gave a little push, as if to
emphasize his invitation.

Inside the ladies' room of the station a red-hot stove sent out a
cheerful welcome. To this the man added stick after stick of dry pine
wood, much to Marion's amusement and comfort, as she watched him.

"Come from down South?" he asked, after he had convinced himself of
the impossibility of crowding in another.

"From the West," said Marion pleasantly.

"You don't say so. You ain't Aunt Betty Parke's niece, now, be ye?"

"I am Marion Parke. Did you know my father?"

"Let me see. Was your father Philip Parke? Phil, we used to call him
when he was a boy, the one that would have an eddication, and went a
home-missionarying after he got chock-full of books. Aunt Betty, she
took it hard. Be he your