for a 'silver no nothing', and provoked
so much laughter that we both fled to the sidewalk. Uncle Eb had to do
our buying for us in the end.

'Wall, what'll ye hev?' he said to me at length.

I tried to think-it was no easy thing to do after all I had seen.

'Guess I'll take a jacknife,' I whispered.

'Give this boy a knife,' he demanded. 'Wants t' be good 'n sharp. Might
hev t' skin a swift with it sometime.'

'What ye want?' he asked, then turning to Hope.

'A doll,' she whispered.

'White or black?' said he.

'White,' said she, 'with dark eyes and hair.'

'Want a reel, splendid, firs'-class doll,' he said to the clerk. 'Thet
one'll do, there, with the sky-blue dress 'n the pink apron.'

We were worn out with excitement when we left for home under lowering
skies. We children lay side by side under the robes, the doll between
us, and were soon asleep. It was growing dark when Uncle Eb woke us,
and the snow was driving in at the doorway. The air was full of snow, I
remember, and Old Doctor was wading to his knees in a drift. We were up
in the hills and the wind whistled in our little chimney. Uncle Eb had
a serious look in his face. The snow grew deeper and Old Doctor went
slower every moment.

'Six mild from home,' Uncle Eb muttered, as he held up to rest a moment.
'Six mild from home. 'Fraid we're in fer a night uv it.'

We got to the top of Fadden's Hill about dark, and the snow lay so deep
in the cut we all got out for fear the house would tip over. Old Doctor
floundered along a bit further until he went down in the drift and lay
between the shafts half buried. We had a shovel that always hung beside
a small hatchet in the sledgehouse--for one might need much beside the
grace of God of a winter's day in that country--and with it Uncle Eb
began to uncover the horse. We children stood in the sledgehouse door
watching him and holding the lantern. Old Doctor was on his feet in a
few minutes.

''Tain' no use tryin',' said Uncle Eb, as he began to unhitch. 'Can't go
no further t'night.'

Then he dug away the snow beside the sledgehouse, and hitched Old Doctor
to the horseshoe that was nailed to the rear end of it. That done, he
clambered up the side of the cut and took some rails off the fence and
shoved them over on the roof of the house, so that one end rested there
and the other on the high bank beside us. Then he cut a lot of hemlock
boughs with the hatchet, and thatched the roof he had made over Old