forgot." He had
raised up and caught hold of Ralph's coat.

Ralph had great difficulty in quieting him. He told him that if he went
in there Bill Jones might claim that he was a runaway and belonged
there. And poor Shocky only shivered and said he was cold. A minute
later, Ralph found that he was shaking with a chill, and a horrible
dread came over him. What if Shocky should die? It was only a minute's
work to get down, take the warm horse-blanket from under the saddle, and
wrap it about the boy, then to strip off his own overcoat and add that
to it. It was now daylight, and finding, after he had mounted, that
Shocky continued to shiver, he put the roan to his best speed for the
rest of the way, trotting up and down the slippery hills, and galloping
away on the level ground. How bravely the roan laid himself to his work,
making the fence-corners fly past in a long procession! But poor little
Shocky was too cold to notice them, and Ralph shuddered lest Shocky
should never be warm again, and spoke to the roan, and the roan
stretched out his head, and dropped one ear back to hear the first word
of command, and stretched the other forward to listen for danger, and
then flew with a splendid speed down the road, past the patches of
blackberry briars, past the elderberry bushes, past the familiar red-haw
tree in the fence-corner, over the bridge without regard to the threat
of a five-dollar fine, and at last up the long lane into the village,
where the smoke from the chimneys was caught and whirled round with the
snow.

CHAPTER XXI.

MISS NANCY SAWYER.

In a little old cottage in Lewisburg, on one of the streets which was
never traveled except by a solitary cow seeking pasture or a countryman
bringing wood to some one of the half-dozen families living in it, and
which in summer was decked with a profusion of the yellow and white
blossoms of the dog-fennel--in this unfrequented street, so generously
and unnecessarily broad, lived Miss Nancy Sawyer and her younger sister
Semantha. Miss Nancy was a providence, one of those old maids that are
benedictions to the whole town; one of those in whom the mother-love,
wanting the natural objects on which to spend itself, overflows all
bounds and lavishes itself on every needy thing, and grows richer and
more abundant with the spending, a fountain of inexhaustible blessing.
There is no nobler life possible to any one than to an unmarried woman.
The more shame that some choose