"I am so thankful!"
"Listen to the church-bell! How faintly it comes ploughing through the snow; but oh, how sweet! Hal, I can't help feeling happy. I wonder if it is wrong, when we were so sad last night?"
Something floated through Hal's brain,—"Sorrow may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning." He brushed a tear away from his eye; but it was tenderness rather than sorrow.
While Dot was cooking her dainty breakfast, Hal took a turn at shovelling snow, clearing the old doorstep, and part of the path. It made his cheeks rosy, and the fresh crisp air took the tired look out of his eyes.
"Granny has been asking for you," Dot said, as he came in.
He warmed his hands, and entered the room. Dot lingered by the window, glancing up and down the unbroken road. Not a sound anywhere. It absolutely seemed to her as if a little bird ought to come out of the snowy trees, and sing.
Something attracted her attention,—a man striding along, muffled up to the ears, looking this way and that, as if considering how best to extricate himself from the last plunge, and make another. No, it was not Dr. Meade,—no one for them thus early in the morning.
Still she looked, and smiled a little. The strong, manful tread was good to behold. When he reached the house, he paused, appeared to be considering, then wheeled about.
She laughed this time. He placed his hand on the gate-post, and leaped over. It was such a boyish, agile spring! In the path he stamped off the snow, came straight to the door, and knocked.
Dot started, and opened it. A tall, laughing fellow, with a bronze brown beard and swarthy cheeks, lighted with a healthful glow of crimson. What was there so oddly familiar in the laughing eyes?