sun. The little church was
lavishly decked every year by Aunt Rosalie, with these witnesses to her
skill.

She was known therefore throughout the village to young and old as
"Aunt Rose" or "Miss Rose," and not seldom was she followed in her
walks by a crowd of children, especially little girls, with the
petition "a rose for me too!" And "Aunt Rose" was always prepared for
them; the less successful specimens were kept entirely for this purpose
and were distributed from her capacious reticule with a lavish hand.

Frank Linden had long been accustomed to spend an occasional hour in
the old lady's society. At the sight of her something of the atmosphere
of peace which surrounded her seemed to descend upon him and calmed and
soothed him. She would sit calm and still at her little table, her
small withered hands busied in forming the "symbols of a well-rounded
life." By degrees she had related to him in a quaintly solemn tone,
stories of the lives which had passed under the pointed gables of this
roof. There was little light and much shade among them, much guilt, and
error, a dark bit of life-history. A married pair who did not agree, an
only child idolized by both, and this only son covered himself and his
parents with disgrace and fled to America, where he died. The parents
were left behind without hope or comfort in the world, each reproaching
the other for the failure in their son's training. Then the wife died
of grief, and now began an endless term of loneliness for the elderly
man under a ban of misanthropy and scorn of his kind; loving no one but
his dog, associating with no one except with Wolff, who brought the
news and gossip of the town, and treating even him with a disdain
bordering on insult.

"But you see, my dear nephew," the old aunt had added, "there are men
who are more like hounds than the hounds themselves,--dogs will cry out
when they are trodden upon, but the sort to which he belongs will smile
humbly at the hardest kick--and William found such a man necessary to
him."

It was snowing; the mountains were all white, the garden lay shrouded
under a shining white coverlid, and white snow-flakes were dancing in
the air. Frank Linden had come back from hunting with the steward, and
after dinner he went into Aunt Rosalie's room. She rose as he entered
and came towards him.

"There you see, my dear nephew, what happens when you go out for a day.
You have had a visit, such a splendid fashionable visitor i