“The snow had begun in the gloaming,
And busily all the night,
Had been heaping field and highway
With a silence deep and white.”
It was Saturday, the children’s holiday. Miss Lane was walking through the glen towards the village, and looked at everything with pleasure. The ground was covered with a light snow, and the trees wore a sparkling coat of mail. It seemed as if a new earth had been created during the night, so strange and beautiful was the aspect of the forest.
The air was soft and fresh, and quite still; the snow was like an exquisitely pure carpet under her feet, and here and there, a branch, laden with its weight of pearls, bent over the path.
It was more like a dream than anything real, for the trees wore a foliage fairy-like in its delicacy, and a gray sky hung over the whole. Sounds came muffled to her ears, and the brook was ice-bound. Everything was so strangely, wonderfully beautiful, that her heart was thrilled, and she was half afraid to think how very glad she was—how very fair the world seemed. So, moving on quickly in the lightness of her heart, pushing the snow with her feet, she came out of the long avenue of crystal, and knocked at the cottage door.
“She was took bad in the night, ma’am,” was the step-mother’s reply to her inquiries, and the awful nearness of death fell upon the marvellous loveliness of the day, changing the bounding gladness of the lady’s heart into a calm, quiet sadness, and leaving an impress of wonder and fright on the hard face of the woman, as they stood in the presence of that soul so near the borders of the silent land.
“She’s been lying just so for two hours, Miss. I can’t get her to open her eyes or to speak. The doctor’s been here, and he says ’taint no use; so he went away again.”