snowy
mountains a melancholy waning moon was swinging. The valley was full of
mist, white and shining where the light fell upon it, a vaporous purple
where the shadows held sway. So still it was! the only motion in all the
world the throbbing stars and her palpitating heart. So solemnly silent!
It was a relief, as she trudged on and on, to note a gradual change;
to watch the sky withdraw, seeming fainter; to see the moon grow filmy,
like some figment of the frost; to mark the gray mist steal on apace,
wrap mountain, valley, and heaven with mystic folds, shut out all vision
of things familiar. Through it only the sense of dawn could creep.

*****

She recognized the locality; her breath was short; her step quickened.
She appeared, like an apparition out of the mists, close to a fence, and
peered through the snow-laden rails. A sudden pang pierced her heart.

For there, within the enclosure, milking the cow, she saw, all blooming
in the snow--herself; the azalea-like girl she had been!

She had not known how dear to her was that bright young identity she
remembered. She had not realized how far it had gone from her. She felt
a forlorn changeling looking upon her own estranged estate.

A faint cry escaped her.

The cow, with lifted head and a muttered low of surprise, moved out of
reach of the milker, who, half kneeling upon the ground, stared with
wide blue eyes at her ghost in the mist.

There was a pause. It was only a moment before Eugenia spoke; it seemed
years, so charged it was with retrospect.

"I kem over hyar ter hev a word with ye," she said.

At the sound of a human voice Luke Todd's wife struggled to her feet She
held the piggin with one arm encircled about it, and with the other
hand she clutched the plaid shawl around her throat. Her bright hair was
tossed by the rising wind.

"I 'lowed I'd find ye hyar a-milkin' 'bout now."

The homely allusion reassured the younger woman.

"I hev ter begin toler'ble early," she said. "Spot gins 'bout a gallon a
milkin' now."

Spot's calf, which subsisted on what was left over, seemed to find it
cruel that delay should be added to his hardships, and he lifted up
his voice in a plaintive remonstrance. This reminded Mrs. Todd of his
existence; she turned and let down the bars that served to exclude him.

The stranger was staring at her very hard. Somehow she quailed under
that look. Though it was fixed upon her in unvarying intensity, it had
a strange impers