ents one of the loungers approached me,
calling me by name, and in a rough but hearty fashion condoled with me
for my mishap, advised me to stay at Remus all night, and added: "The
quarters ain't the best in the world yer at this hotel. But thar's an
old man yer--the preacher that was--that for twenty years hez taken in
such fellers as you and lodged 'em free gratis for nothing, and hez
been proud to do it. The old man used to be rich; he ain't so now;
sold his big house on the cross roads, and lives in a little cottage
with his darter right over yan. But ye couldn't do him a better turn
than to go over thar and stay, and if he thought I'd let ye go out o'
Remus without axing ye, he'd give me h-ll. Stop, I'll go with ye."

I might at least call on the old man, and I accompanied my guide
through the still falling snow until we reached a little cottage. The
door opened to my guide's knock, and with the brief and discomposing
introduction, "Yer, ole man, I've brought you one o' them snow-bound
lecturers," he left me on the threshold, as my host, a kindly-faced,
white-haired man of seventy, came forward to greet me.

His frankness and simple courtesy overcame the embarrassment left by my
guide's introduction, and I followed him passively as he entered the
neat, but plainly-furnished sitting-room. At the same moment a pretty,
but faded young woman arose from the sofa and was introduced to me as
his daughter. "Fanny and I live here quite alone, and if you knew how
good it was to see somebody from the great outside world now and then,
you would not apologize for what you call your intrusion."

During this speech I was vaguely trying to recall where and when and
under what circumstances I had ever before seen the village, the house,
the old man or his daughter. Was it in a dream, or in one of those dim
reveries of some previous existence to which the spirit of mankind is
subject? I looked at them again. In the careworn lines around the
once pretty girlish mouth of the young woman, in the furrowed seams
over the forehead of the old man, in the ticking of the old-fashioned
clock on the shelf, in the faint whisper of the falling snow outside, I
read the legend, "Patience, patience; Wait and Hope."

The old man filled a pipe, and offering me one, continued, "Although I
seldom drink myself, it was my custom to always keep some nourishing
liquor in my house for passing guests, but to-night I find myself
without any." I h