Others beside the sun were taken by surprise. It was the first snowfall of the year and a good, hard, heavy one. Down our way, some winters, we had hardly any snows at all; then, again, some winters we had a plenty; but scarcely ever did we have them before Christmas. This one came as a profound and an annoying visitation, taking the community at large unawares and unprepared, and making a great nuisance of itself from the start. Practically without exception, doorstep hydrants had tight colds in the head that morning. On being treated with lavings of hot water they dripped catarrhally from their cast-iron noses for a little while and then developed the added symptoms of icicles.
Cooks were hours late coming to cook breakfast, and when they did come uttered despairing moans to find range boilers frozen up and kitchen taps utterly unresponsive to first-aid measures. At some houses it was nearly eight o'clock before the milkman got round, with wooden runners under his milk wagon in place of wheels and rosaries of rusted sleigh bells on the necks of his smoking team. Last year's rubber boots came out of the closet and any old year's toy sled came out of the attic.
The old negro man who did whitewashing in the spring, picked blackberries for his summertime living, and in the fall peddled corn-shuck doormats and scaly-bark hickory nuts, made the circuit of his regular patrons, equipped with a shovel over his shoulder and his venerable feet done up in burlaps, to shovel footpaths for a price. Where the wind piled the snow in little drifts he left a wake behind him as though a baby elephant had floundered through there.
In the back yard Sir Rooster squawked his loud disgust as his naked legs sank shank-deep into the feathery mass. His harem, a row of still and huddled shapes on the roosts, clamped their chilled toes all the tighter to their perch and stared out through the chicken-house door at a transformed and unfamiliar world. With them—except for their eyes—rigor mortis seemed far advanced. Small boys, rabbit dogs, plumbers and the few persons in town who owned sleighs rejoiced. Housewives, house cats and thin-blooded old ladies and gentlemen were acutely miserable—and showed it.
There were tramps about in numbers. It took a sudden cold snap, with snow accompaniments such as this one, to fetch the tramps forth from their sleeping places near the tracks, and make the citizen realise how many of these southbound soldiers of misfortune the town harboured on any given date between Thanksgiving Day and New Year's. Judge Priest did not know it—and probably would not have much cared if he had known it—but on the right-hand-side post of his front gate, just below the wooden letter box, was scratched the talismanic sign which, to an initiated nation-wide brotherhood, signified that here, at this place, was to be had free and abundant provender, with no stove wood to chop afterward and no heavy buckets of coal to pack in.
Wherefore and hence, throughout the rising hour and well on into the forenoon, a succession of ragged and shivering travellers tracked a straggling path up his walk and round to the back door, coming, with noses a frostbitten red and hands a frostbitten blue, to beg for sustenance. It was part and parcel of the judge's creed of hospitality to turn no stranger away from his door unfed.
“Jedge!” Aunt Dilsey Turner bulged into the old sitting room, where her master sat with his feet close to the grate toasting his shoesoles. “Jedge, they's 'nother one of 'em miz'ble wuthless w'ite trash out yere axin' fur vittles. Tha's de fo'th one inside er hour. Whut you reckin I best do wid 'im?”
“Well, Aunt Dilsey,” the old man answered, “ef vittles is what he asts fur, I believe, under the circumstances, I'd give him some.”
“Whar we goin' git vittles fur 'im?” she demanded.
“Wasn't there anything left over frum breakfast?” He risked the inquiry mildly—almost timidly.