It had ceased to snow, and the sky had cleared. The trees, all the limbs whitened, were outlined distinctly upon it, and through the boughs overhead a brilliant star, aloof and splendid, looked coldly down. Along dark spaces Orion had drawn his glittering blade. Above the snowy mountains a melancholy waning moon was swinging. The valley was full of mist, white and shining where the light fell upon it, a vaporous purple where the shadows held sway. So still it was! the only motion in all the world the throbbing stars and her palpitating heart. So solemnly silent! It was a relief, as she trudged on and on, to note a gradual change; to watch the sky withdraw, seeming fainter; to see the moon grow filmy, like some figment of the frost; to mark the gray mist steal on apace, wrap mountain, valley, and heaven with mystic folds, shut out all vision of things familiar. Through it only the sense of dawn could creep.
She recognized the locality; her breath was short; her step quickened. She appeared, like an apparition out of the mists, close to a fence, and peered through the snow-laden rails. A sudden pang pierced her heart.
For there, within the enclosure, milking the cow, she saw, all blooming in the snow—herself; the azalea-like girl she had been!
She had not known how dear to her was that bright young identity she remembered. She had not realized how far it had gone from her. She felt a forlorn changeling looking upon her own estranged estate.
A faint cry escaped her.
The cow, with lifted head and a muttered low of surprise, moved out of reach of the milker, who, half kneeling upon the ground, stared with wide blue eyes at her ghost in the mist.
There was a pause. It was only a moment before Eugenia spoke; it seemed years, so charged it was with retrospect.
“I kem over hyar ter hev a word with ye,” she said.
At the sound of a human voice Luke Todd's wife struggled to her feet She held the piggin with one arm encircled about it, and with the other hand she clutched the plaid shawl around her throat. Her bright hair was tossed by the rising wind.