LLS.

How the wind blew on the evening of the 31st December, in the
year--but no matter for the date. It came roaring from the north,
fraught with the icy chillness of those hyperborean regions that are
lost to the sunlight for six months, the realm of ice-ribbed caverns,
and snow mountains heaped up above the horizon in the cold and
cheerless sky. On it came, that northern blast, howling and tearing,
and menacing with destruction every obstacle that crossed its path. It
dashed right through a gorge in the mountains, and twisted the arms of
the rock-rooted hemlock and the giant oak, as if they were the twigs
of saplings. Then it swept over the wild, waste meadows, rattling the
frozen sedge, and whirling into eddies the few dry leaves that
remained upon the surface of the earth. Next it invaded the principal
street of the quaint old village, and played the mischief with the
tall elms and the venerable buttonwoods that stood on either side like
sentinels guarding the highway. How the old gilt lion that swung from
the sign post of the tavern, hanging like a malefactor in irons, was
shaken and disturbed! Backwards and forwards the animal was tossed,
like a bark upon the ocean. Now he seemed as if about to turn a
somerset and circumnavigate the beam from which he hung, creaking and
groaning dismally all the while, like an unhappy soul in purgatory.
The loose shutters of the upper story of the tavern chattered like
the teeth of a witch-ridden old crone. But cheerful fires of hickory
and maple were burning within doors; a merry group was gathered in the
old oak parlor, and little recked the guests of the elemental war
without. In fact, they knew nothing of it, till the driver of the
village stage coach, making his appearance with a few flakes of snow
on his snuff-colored surtout, announced, as he expanded his broad
hands to the genial blaze, that it was a "wild night out of doors."

But on--on sped the wild wind, driving the snow flakes before it as a
victorious army sweeps away the routed skirmishers and outposts of the
enemy. Away went the night wind on its wild errand, reaching at last a
solitary cottage on the outskirts of the village. Here it revelled in
unwonted fury, ripping up the loose shingles from the moss-grown
rooftree, and forcing an entrance through many a yawning crevice.

The scene within the cottage presented a strange and painful contrast
to the interior of most of the comfortable houses in the flourishi