ous about the pasturing stock, and was relieved
when Japheth Pettigrass came in sight, leading a slipping, sliding
cavalcade of terrified horses to shelter in the great stables. The young
clergyman's thoughts were with the ill-housed poor of the South Tredegar
parish; and Ardea's--?

Young Mr. Morelock put his private anxieties aside in deference to the
growing terror in the eyes of his young hostess. He had known her but a
short time, meeting her only as his St. John's-in-Paradise duties gave
him opportunity; but from the first she had stood to him as a type of
womanly serenity and fortitude. Yet now she was visibly terrified and
distressed, and the clergyman wondered. She had never before given him
the impression that she belonged to the storm-fearing group of women.

"Can't we have a little music, Miss Ardea?" he asked, after a while,
hoping to suggest a comforting diversion.

"You will have to excuse me," she said, in a low voice. "I--I think I am
not quite well."

Cousin Euphrasia overheard the admission and recommended the quiet of up
stairs, drawn curtains and possets. But Ardea let the suggestion fall to
the ground, and a little while afterward Morelock surprised her at her
forenoon occupation of going from window to window, with the look of
distress rising to sharp agony when the overladen trees began to groan
and crack under the crushing ice burden.

"What is it, Miss Dabney?" he said, out of the heart of sympathy, when
he came on her alone in the library. "Is there anything I can do?"

"Yes," she rejoined quickly. "The moment the storm subsides even a
little, I must go out. My excuse will be a desire to see, a thirst for
fresh air--anything; and you must abet me if there is any opposition."

"But I thought you were afraid of the storm," he interposed.

"I? I should be out in it this minute if I thought grandfather wouldn't
be tempted to lock me in my room for proposing such a thing. And I
_must_ go before dark, whatever happens."

The young man from New England was a gentleman born. He neither asked
questions nor raised objections.

"Of course, you may command me utterly," he said warmly. "I'll help; and
I'll go with you, if you will let me."

"That is what I want," she said frankly. "Will you propose it? I--I
can't explain, even to my cousin."

"Certainly," he agreed; and a little later, when the temperature dropped
the necessary three degrees and the rain stopped, he calmly announced
his inten