ood
by the fire, and a plant or two in the south window. He came in,
stamping off the snow; Muff crawled behind the stove, and gave himself
up to a fit of metaphysics.

"Cold, Amos?"

"Of course. What else should I be, woman?"

His wife made no reply. His unusual impatience only saddened her eyes a
little. She was one of those women who would have borne a life-long
oppression with dumb lips. Amos Ryck was not an unkind husband, but it
was not his way to be tender; the years which had whitened his hair had
brought him stern experiences: life was to him a battle, his horizon
always that about a combatant. But he loved her.

"Most ready to sit down, Martha?" he said at last, more gently.

"In a minute, Amos."

She finished some bit of evening work, her step soft about the room.
Then she drew up the low rocking-chair with its covering of faded
crimson chintz, and sat down by her husband.

She did this without noise; she did not sit too near to him; she took
pains not to annoy him by any feminine bustle over her work; she chose
her knitting, as being always most to his fancy; then she looked up
timidly into his face. But there was a frown, slight to be sure, but
still a frown, upon it, neither did he speak. Some gloomy, perhaps some
bitter thought held the man. A reflection of it might have struck across
her, as she turned her head, fixing her eyes upon the coals.

The light on her face showed it pale; the lines on her mouth were deeper
than any time had worn for her husband; her hair as gray as his, though
he was already a man of grave, middle age, when the little wife--hardly
past her sixteenth birthday--came to the farm with him.

Perhaps it is these silent women--spiritless, timid souls, like this
one,--who have, after all, the greatest capacity for suffering. You
might have thought so, if you had watched her. Some infinite mourning
looked out of her mute brown eyes. In the very folding of her hands
there was a sort of stifled cry, as one whose abiding place is in the
Valley of the Shadow.

A monotonous sob of the wind broke at the corners of the house; in the
silence between the two, it was distinctly heard. Martha Ryck's face
paled a little.

"I wish--" She tried to laugh. "Amos, it cries just like a baby."

"Nonsense!"

Her husband rose impatiently, and walked to the window. He was not given
to fancies; all his life was ruled and squared up to a creed. Yet I
doubt if he liked the sound of that wind mu