CHAPTER VI.
WHICH ATTEMPTS TO SHOW WHY THE SKIES FALL.

Do you know what the snow is and where it comes from?

The Dictionary says it is 'a frozen moisture, which falls from the atmosphere in white flakes.' But that description doesn't seem to make us know very much more about it somehow.

Some people say the snow is caused by the angels shaking the feather beds up in Heaven; but that, both scientifically and spiritually too, appears to me an improbable solution. Other people, again, say it is all the Time Spirit plucking his geese. And who are the Time Spirit's geese?—Well, if you really want to know, they are all the little poets, and little painters, and little musicians, and little players and all the little inventors of little theories, and little writers of little books, who spend their time in diligently trying to persuade themselves and others that they are great writers of great books, and discoverers of a universal panacea for the healing of the nations; and that, in short, they are not any of them geese at all, but as fine swans as you can see on any river or pond in the three kingdoms. And they come cackling, and hissing, and sidling, and waddling up to the Time Spirit every year—specially in the spring and about Christmastide—in great flocks, and all cry out together:—

'Is it possible to deny, O Time Spirit, that we are every one of us swans?'

And then, I am sorry to say—for though it is perfectly right and just, it isn't the least bit agreeable, as some of us know to our cost—the Time Spirit turns up his sleeves and sets to work with a will, and catches them, though they mostly make a terrible noise and fluster, and plucks them one by one—big feathers first and then small—and sends them away looking sadly bare and foolish, and thereby leaving the world in no doubt whatsoever that they are only geese after all. And some wise persons, who have a perfect right to speak on the matter, think that why we have had so much more snow than usual the last few winters, is because—what with higher education and women's colleges, and one thing and another—the flocks of geese grow larger and larger, so that the poor Time Spirit is getting worn to fiddle strings with everlasting plucking, and it seems not unlikely we may soon have snowstorms nine months in the year.

But what if a real swan does come among the geese, once in a way?—Ah! that is quite another matter. For the Time Spirit discovers it in a very few minutes, and jumps up and pulls down his sleeves, and slips off his hat—he has to wear one, you know, to keep the goose down from lodging in his hair—and draws his heels together with a snap and makes a bow from the waist, like an accomplished courtier, and says:—

'All hail to you, my master or my mistress!'—as the case may be.—'For you the stars shine by night, and the sun rises at morning. All the world is yours, or shall soon be, if you have patience, and faith, and daring, and are true to the voice of the dæmon within.'

But there is yet another explanation of the snowfall besides this, and it is, perhaps, after all, the most reasonable one to believe in. For when the nights are long and the days are short, and the sunlight is feeble as a sick man's smile, the North Wind wakes from his summer sleep and calls to his brother the East Wind, and they go forth over the earth driving the heavy-laden snow-clouds before them, and the pale snow-fairies who do their will. Down from the ice floes, and the dim, silent, polar wastes, over land and sea, with a shout like the roar of a battle, and a laugh like the crackle of thunder, while the hills grow white with fear under his tread, and the forests bow themselves and shriek in his fierce breath as the planks and rigging of a ship shriek in a storm at sea, the North Wind comes. He was born hundreds of thousands of years ago, in the Ice Age, when the glaciers crawled out from the heart of the mountains, mile-long, grey-green monsters, over what are now fertile meadows and sunny plains—before man or beast, so vigorous was the keen-toothed frost, roamed over the surface of the earth. His eyes are blue and clear; and they dance as you may see the sky dance on a sharp winter's night; and his white beard hangs low on his chest, which is broad and firm as a hill-side; and he is in the full vigour of a lusty manhood still, and it promises to be a very long while yet before his eye grows dim or his limbs grow weak with age. Some think, indeed, that as he saw man first born into the world, he may live to see him die off it again—to see this great ball, which so long has been our human dwelling-place and home, rolling silent out into immeasurable space, a dead planet, locked in the arms of everlasting frost.

But be that as it may, on the fair Sunday morning, when our friend little Peter, his mother, and brothers, and Eliza, were going through the pine forest to the church at Nullepart, the North Wind was up and walking southward, southward over Europe, with the great, grey snow-clouds hurrying on before, for he had hard work to do. And, as the day wore on, he gathered the clouds from east and west, and packed them together in a vast, dusky mass over the town, and the forest and the limestone crags and gorges, and the wide, flat meadows where the cows pasture in summer, and over little Peter's home. And then he bade the snow-fairies bestir themselves, and prick the clouds as full of holes as the top of a flour-dredge, and wrap all the country in a robe of spotless white.

Now, it happened that among the snow-fairies there was one who was very young and tender-hearted. Indeed she was not really a snow-fairy at all, but a child of the soft South Wind, who, when all her sisters flew away—as the swallows fly in autumn—to the tropics, overslept herself and got left behind by mistake. And she had joined the snowfairies because she was dull and lonely, and could find no other playfellows, and nothing to do. But, for all that, she did not care to help them in their work, for she had not been brought up to it, you see, and it seemed to her a sad, chilly business. So instead of laughing and playing and flitting about, and easing the great lumbering clouds of their burden, she sat down by herself in a hollow of one of them and cried, and cried. For she could not help thinking of all the sheep on lonely hillsides; and of the small birds seeking food and finding none in the snow-buried fields, and lanes, and hedges; and of little neglected children, of whom, alas! there are always so many, in bare cottage or dreary, city cellar, with no warm clothes, or food, or firing; and of wayfarers on barren heaths and bleak moors; and of the beggars, and vagabonds, and outcasts, the sorry throng of refuse humanity, that tramps the high roads of every country of the civilised world, with neither home, nor hope, nor money, and as she thought of their frost-nipped hands, and bleeding feet, and scanty rags, she cried as if her little heart would break.

But the snow-fairies were vexed with her, and scolded and flouted her, for it is, as you all know, a great nuisance to have somebody crying and sobbing and making a fuss, when you yourselves feel quite happy and comfortable. And at last, in their irritation against her, they made such a noise and clamour, and so pushed and plagued and hustled the poor little creature, that the squabbling and commotion reached the ears of the North Wind himself, and he asked what in the name of common-sense was the matter. Then the snow-fairies all pointed at her, and all began chattering at once, as you may hear a flock of starlings chattering in the tops of the beeches at sunset, on a mild March day. But the North Wind told them to go about their business; and he took up the little fairy and stood her in the hollow of his great hand, and asked her quite gently—for the stronger a man is the gentler he can be, as you will very likely find out some fine day—why she was so sad.

Then, though she was horribly frightened and blushed up to the tips of her pretty ears, as a modest young maiden should, she looked the great North Wind bravely in the face and told him her little story—how she had been left behind, how she loved the sunshine and the summer, and how she grieved for the misery and famine that winter brings, too often, on man and bird and beast.

'And I don't see why it should all happen,' she said; 'or why there cannot be summer all the year.'

Still, though she spoke up so courageously, the poor, little fairy trembled, for she thought that the North Wind would be angry, as the snow-fairies had been, and that he might crush her tiny life into nothingness in the grasp of his great hand. But the North Wind did nothing of the kind. He looked at her till his clear, dancing eyes grew dim and misty; and when, at last, he spoke his voice was low and sweet and sad as church bells that the sailor hears far out at sea, as he sails at evening in sight of some fair, foreign coast.

'Ah, my child!' he said, 'all those who have once been happy, young and old, wise and foolish, mortal and immortal, mighty princes, prophets, psalmists, all living creatures, nay, the very earth herself, all that my eyes have looked on through unnumbered centuries, have asked and still ask that question in some form or other; but the answer is not granted yet. And so, knowing that till the end it may not be told us, we grow humble and grow wise; and learn that it is best to do the work that is appointed us without doubt or hesitation, careless whether it be known or unknown, pleasant or unpleasant, hard or soft, kind or cruel even, so that we get it well and honestly done. As for you, you have lost your way and have wandered from the business set for you to do, and therefore you are filled with sadness, and fears, and questionings. But have patience for a while, and have faith, too, that the mysterious purposes of the Almighty, your Master and mine, will certainly be made plain at last.—Meanwhile, go and help your cousins the snow-fairies. And then, because, though you are honest and brave, you still are frail and tender, when the night of my winter reign is over, I will give you back into the keeping of my kinsman the South Wind, who will find less sharp and cutting work for you to do.'

And all this, though you may not at first see exactly how, has a great deal to do with the story of our friend, little Peter; and therefore, even at the risk of your thinking it somewhat dry and puzzling, it has seemed to me well to set it down for you to read here.

'Make haste, children, make haste,' cried Susan Lepage. 'We must get our dinner at the Red Horse and start homewards as quickly as we can.'

'Oh! I have been hearing something so terrible,' said Eliza, to her mistress, as she came down the church steps. 'Not that I am surprised at it—no, no, no. I have always suspected it. I am sure his appearance this morning was enough to confirm one's worst suspicions.'

Eliza pursed up her lips and shook her head with an air of extreme wisdom.

'They do say that Paqualin is a wizard,' she went on. 'Take care, Peter; if you look one way and walk another, you will unquestionably tumble down. And you needn't stare at me so. I wasn't talking to you.—Joseph Berri, the watchmaker's brother, has just been telling me all about it. There is no doubt he overlooked one of Miller Georgeon's draught oxen three years ago, so that it would not eat, and grew daily thinner and thinner, and had, at last, to be killed.—Go on, Peter; your ears will grow as long as a donkey's if you are always listening like that.—And they do say he can call up evil spirits, and storms, and thunder and lightning, and whirlwinds, when he wants them for his own vicious purposes.'

'Nonsense, Eliza, nonsense,' said Susan Lepage. 'You are far too willing to listen to idle, ill-natured tales.'

Eliza sighed profoundly and turned up her eyes.

'Ah!' she murmured, 'some day, ma'am, you will see who was in the right, and give credit where it is due. For my part, if it does snow to-day, I shall know what to think.'

'Make haste, children,' said Susan Lepage again. 'The time draws on, and we have no time to waste.'

But it was not so easy to make haste. The large dining-room of the Red Horse, with its tall, white-curtained windows, was crowded. From up the valley and down the valley in their long, narrow, country carts—for all the world like tea-trays set on four wheels—with cracking whips and jangling bells, or on foot, from lonely hamlets in the forest, or solitary herdsmen's huts on the steep grass slopes beneath the grey limestone cliffs and crags, all the inhabitants of the district had gathered to attend the church, and see the show, and spend a merry Sunday. And among all these good people were many friends of Susan Lepage, who detained her with greetings and questions. Then, too, the places at the tables were already taken, and it was some time before the boys and their mother could get seats. Even so little Peter had to squeeze himself into a very small space between Madame Georgeon,—the stout, comely wife of Monsieur Georgeon, the miller at Oùdonc—and his mother. But little Peter thought it all delightful, though he was rather pinched as to elbow-room. He liked the rattle of the knives and forks, and the many voices, and the talk and laughter; and watched with great curiosity the active serving-maids, balancing in their hands—and indeed all up their arms, too, so it seemed—an incredible number of plates and dishes. Even the floor sprinkled with sawdust, and the not altogether spotless table-cloth, were interesting. For it was all new, you see, to little Peter; and even things not very nice in themselves are charming when they are new.

Then, too, Peter was very hungry; and though Madame Georgeon's full skirts overflowed his small legs, and her handsome shawl, thrown gracefully back from her shoulders—the room was warm, what with the great, china stove in the corner and all the company—and though her shawl, I say, enveloped him entirely now and then in a cloud of many coloured cashmere, the miller's wife was very kind, and coaxed and petted him, and piled up his plate with all manner of dainty things.

'Eh, par exemple,' she said, smiling and nodding at him as she sipped her glass of red wine—'it is not every day we go into society, is it, to meet old friends and make new ones? You, Susan Lepage, from a child were of a serious turn of mind. That is an excellent thing, too, no doubt. It secures the future. But the present should not be despised either. The members of my family—the saints be praised—have ever possessed a little grain of gaiety in their composition. For my part I think it is only economical to make the most of this world while you are permitted to be in it. And I regard it as an actual impiety to neglect any opportunity of innocent entertainment. Eat, my child, eat then—a spoonful or so more of this admirable pastry. See, on my plate here. I was provident when the dish came round, and secured a double portion.'

Then, turning, she smiled at Susan Lepage again:—

'Do not alarm yourself. It will not injure him. He will walk it off. Exercise is a fine thing to prevent food lying heavy on the stomach.'

'Perhaps moderation is a finer one still,' answered the other gently. 'But are you not ready, my sons? We must not linger, though you in your kindness would tempt us to do so, good Madame Georgeon. We do not drive home by the high road as you do, but go on foot through the forest, and the days are short.—Antony, we should surely be moving.'

But Antony was in no haste to be going, for he, too, was making the most of this opportunity of innocent enjoyment. He sat beside Marie Georgeon, the miller's pretty daughter, who certainly took after her mother's family in respect of gaiety. And, clean glasses being somewhat scarce at the Red Horse from the unusual number of guests, it happened that she and Antony shared one; and her brown eyes were as full of mischief as a May morning is full of sunshine as she glanced up at him over the rim of it, and laughed and talked, and fingered the gold and garnet necklace that fitted so neatly about her throat. And what with her pretty looks and merry words, the young fellow's head was completely turned—and if you do not quite understand what that means, you need only wait a little, for you are bound to find out clearly enough some day. And, as the inevitable consequence of his head being turned, he hardly heard his mother when she spoke to him, and made no haste in the world to finish his dinner, and loitered and dawdled about upon one excuse and another as long as possible; and, I am sorry to say, spoke quite snappishly to his brother Paul, when the latter pointed out to him that the clock had struck three already, and that it was high time to be going. You see, it is just as well not to understand—by experience, anyhow—what it is to have your head turned, since it leads to these deplorable errors both of manners and conduct.

So it fell out that when at last our friends left the jovial company at the Red Horse, and came out from the steaming dining-room into the street, the snow-fairies had already been some half-hour at work, and the roadway and house-roofs were all lightly powdered with snow. To little Peter, warm with his dinner, this seemed the crowning piece of fun of a glorious day. He could hardly get along for turning to look at the marks his nailed boots made in the snow. But Susan Lepage thought very differently. She glanced up at the dull, clouded sky, and remembered the sad words of John Paqualin, the charcoal-burner, that everyone had treated so lightly some few hours ago.

'Will it last, do you think?' she asked of Antony.

Antony, however, was still thinking of pretty Marie Georgeon, with whom he had shared the kernel of a double almond at parting, both wishing as they eat it. He was wishing his wish still, and it was such an agreeable one that he felt quite superior to all inconvenient incidents in the way of snowstorms and such like.—He cocked his cap more on one side than ever, and assumed quite a patronising air, even towards his mother, which, to say the least, was very silly of him.

'It may last or it may not,' he answered. 'But really, it doesn't very much matter.'

'I wish that your father was with us,' added Susan.

'Why?' cried Antony. 'He couldn't stop it snowing any more than I can. And pray remember, mother, that this isn't by any means the first time I have walked home from Nullepart in bad weather. I believe I could find my way back blindfold or at midnight for that matter.'

'I am not at all troubled about you, my son,' replied his mother quietly, 'but about our poor little Peter here, with his little short legs.'

'Oh, Peter will do well enough,' said the lad impatiently.

Some find it difficult to make room in their hearts for more than one person at a time, you know; and Antony's heart was still pretty well occupied by Marie Georgeon. He walked along briskly humming the tune of Partant pour la Syrie, which is a song about a young soldier who was pious as well as brave; and a lucky fellow into the bargain, for when he came back from the war he married his master the count's daughter, and lived happily ever after.

'Never mind, mother,' said Paul; 'if the snow is deep, or Peter is tired, I can carry him pick-a-back. He's not very heavy, you know.'

'I shan't be tired. I like the snow,' cried little Peter, and he clapped his hands and pranced about, till Eliza—who was still rather cross because her cousin had neglected to invite her to dinner—caught hold of him and made him walk soberly.

'If you laugh so now there will be tears before night,' she said. 'Laugh at breakfast, cry at dinner, laugh at dinner, cry at supper-time. Ah, dear me! this cold wind; I wish I had thought to put some wool in my ears—I shall be martyred with the toothache.'

So they passed down the main street. It was almost deserted now, for the storm had driven people to take shelter in the wine shops, or, which was far wiser, in their own houses. Even the pigs had gone to their styes, and the fowls to their roosts; and the goats, with their little tinkling bells, were safe housed, too, in their sheds, munching the dry, brown hay that in the summer-time had waved as green grass full of a rainbow of flowers. They passed by the smaller houses and out-buildings, and the great saw-mills where the pine logs from the mountains are cut up, that stand along the bank of the swift river; and crossed the bridge with the dark water rushing underneath; and began climbing the road that zig-zags up the long hill between the great, bare walnut-trees and stubble fields, and wild rocky pastures, to the edge of the pine forest—four tall straight figures, and one short roundabout one, showing black against the ever-deepening snow.

For, alas! the snow was falling thicker and thicker—here in the open it was already up to the second lace-hole of little Peter's boots—scurrying and racing in wild confusion before the icy breath of the North Wind; twisting, and twirling, and dancing; clinging to grass blade, and bush, and branch, and tree stem; hiding the road so that you could no longer see the margin of it; covering the wheel tracks and marks of the horse hoofs; filling up hollows under the grey rocks and boulders, and blurring the jagged outline of the pine-trees where they rise against the sky. Hundreds of thousands of white, hurrying flakes, soft, silent multitudes, filling the air as far as eye could see. There was no fun now in turning round to look at the marks of his nailed boots, for Peter found the snow hid them again almost as soon as they were made; and it was hard work, too, struggling up the steep hill and battling with the wind.

Still the little fellow trudged along without making any complaint. For, you see, he had often heard his father praise the virtues of the Ancient Romans, their courage and endurance; and so Peter had got the notion into his head that it is rather a grand thing not to mind what is uncomfortable and disagreeable, and that it is rather a shameful and unworthy thing to grumble and make a fuss, and cry when your chilblains itch, or you happen to bump your head against the table, or when your legs ache, as his legs began to ache now, with the length and steepness of the hill. More than once his mother stopped and called him to her, and told him he was a good, brave, little man, and pulled the collar of his overcoat up about his red, little ears. And Peter, though he would not have said so for three dozen baking apples, or half a washing-basket full of sugar pigs, did find it very comfortable to stand still in the shelter of her petticoats for a minute or two and get his breath. The town below was hidden in the driving snow, and the dark wall of the pine-trees loomed nearer and nearer.

At last the forest path was reached, and here it was better walking. The snow was lighter, and there was shelter from the force of the wind. But they had taken so much time in climbing the hill that the dusk was coming on, and there was still a long way to go.

Antony no longer whistled. He walked on steadily ahead of the others, turning round now and then with a fine air of superiority and command. Antony, indeed, was as yet not at all displeased with the adventure. He believed that this was an occasion on which he showed to great advantage. His mother followed him in silence. Little Peter came next. He had taken his brother Paul's hand now, and trotted along as fast as his sturdy little legs would carry him, for to tell the honest truth he was getting a trifle frightened. The birds had all hidden themselves away in the thick brushwood, and no longer welcomed him with their merry round eyes. The well-known path looked mysterious, almost awful, in the half-light, with the tall ranks of the pine-trees on either side of it swaying in the blast. Sometimes the snow would slip in great masses from the high branches and fall close to little Peter's feet, as if the black dwarf was throwing snowballs at him. Poor Peter began to feel very shivery and creepy, and did not the least care to look round lest something, he did not exactly know what—and that made it all the worse, perhaps—should be coming tripping, tripping, tripping over the white ground behind him.

But the only person who really came behind little Peter was Eliza; and though I do not want to be rude to Eliza, who was a very worthy young woman in her way, I cannot pretend to say that she was doing anything so graceful as tripping over the snow. Not a bit of it. Eliza was extremely disgruntled by the events of the day, and was as full of complaints and lamentations as a hedgehog's back is full of spines. The wet snow had made her fine, white cap limp and drabbled; so that instead of standing up like the vizor of an ancient helmet, the big, lace frill of it tumbled in the most melancholy manner about her face. She had turned the skirt of her dress up over her head; and what with holding it, and her books tied up in her handkerchief, and what with the tightness of her boots, which were a pair of brand new ones and half a size too small for her into the bargain, Eliza came very much nearer floundering than tripping over the snow.

The forest opens out in places into wide spaces of waste moorland. Across these by daylight or in fine weather it is easy enough to find the right road; but on such an evening as I am telling you about it is by no means easy. On the edge of the moorland, Susan Lepage called to Antony to stop.

'Go slowly,' she said, 'and pray be careful. If we once mistake the path we may find ourselves in a sad plight. I wish your father was with us! Go on in front,' she added, turning to Paul, 'and I will follow you.'

Now his mother's words rather nettled Antony.

'You haven't any real confidence in me,' he said sulkily; 'or you wouldn't be repeating all the while that you wish my father was here.'

You see, Antony had been a good deal flattered and excited by his pretty companion at the Red Horse at Nullepart. And it often happens, unfortunately, that pleasure when it is past makes us quarrelsome. He kicked the snow about with his foot, and his handsome, young face looked quite rebellious and naughty.

'No, no, my son,' Susan Lepage answered gently. 'I have every confidence in your good intentions. But the way must needs be difficult to find. I merely caution you to be careful.'

'Of course I shall be careful,' said the lad angrily, as he stepped from the shelter of the pine trees into the dim, white waste beyond.

For a time all went well; but, all of a sudden, the ground began to grow rough and uneven under foot. Peter stumbled and fell, and scrambled up again half smothered in snow, his poor, little mouth and eyes full of it, and his hands scratched with the harsh heath roots and stones beneath.

'Antony, Antony, we are wandering!' cried his mother, as she wiped the snow out of Peter's eyes and off his clothes, and kissed him. The little boy clung to her, for he felt very desolate and cheerless. He did not think it in the least amusing now to be out in the storm. He longed for the warm, cosy kitchen and for the society of Cincinnatus; but he choked down his tears as his mother kissed him, and tried to be very brave and not to mind his tumble.

Antony turned back, he was a few steps ahead.

'We can only have missed the path by a yard or two,' he said hurriedly. 'You just stand still and I'll find it.'

And he did find it. But, alas! he could not keep to it, for the light faded and darkness came on quicker and quicker, and still the snow fell in hundreds of thousands of soft white flakes. Eliza groaned and lamented, and our poor, little Peter's snow-clogged boots began to chill his feet through, and his hands grew as cold as frogs' paws, and he got more and more hungry and tired. But he did not grumble about it, for he knew his mother and brothers were cold and weary too; so he struggled on manfully through the ankle-deep snow. And, at last, he got too tired even to feel hungry, and began to cry quite gently to himself.

'Please, mother,' he said, 'I can't go any further.'

Susan Lepage took him up in her arms and held him close against her bosom. She did not speak; but, if it had been light enough to see, I think Peter would have found that she was crying too. For the ground was all rough and uneven under foot again; and though Antony went first to the right hand and then to the left he could not make out the road at all.

'I've come all wrong, mother,' he said, and his voice trembled. 'I don't know where we are or which way we are walking. We are lost.'

There was a silence before his mother answered him.

'You have done your best,' she said. 'The event is in the hands of God.'

CHAPTER VIII.
WHICH PROVES THAT EVEN PHILOSOPHIC POLITICIANS MAY HAVE TO ADMIT THEMSELVES IN THE WRONG.

But now it is quite time for us to go back to the old, wooden farm-house on the edge of the forest, and see what Master Lepage, and Gustavus, and that intelligent and experienced person, Cincinnatus, are doing, while the rest of the household are wandering, alas! not without growing alarm, and even suffering, in the darkness and cold and snow.

In point of fact, then, though Master Lepage had been so very determined to please himself by sitting at home, he had found the day uncommonly long and dull. For he was one of those sociable persons who are never quite happy without an audience to hold forth to and instruct, and convince of their own remarkable wisdom and the hearers' equally remarkable folly. And then, too, for all that he appeared somewhat dictatorial and high-handed, Lepage was at bottom an affectionate and warm-hearted man, who loved his wife and children tenderly. And so, as the afternoon drew on, and the wind rose and the clouds gathered, he began to get into a fine fume and fret. He walked up and down the warm, cosy kitchen as restless as a bear in a pit; and knocked double postman's knocks on the weather glass, and declared out loud that the mercury was going up, when he saw perfectly well that it was going down; and did a number of other useless things to try to persuade himself that he was not one bit anxious or uneasy.

'How inferior is the education of men to that of cats!' thought Cincinnatus. 'Before I was old enough to lap milk out of a saucer, my mother had taught me the vulgarity of giving way to purposeless agitation. "Calm," she would say, "is even a greater sign of good-breeding than a curl of hair inside the ears." In my poor master, there, calm and ear-curls alike are wanting. What a situation! Thank heaven, I at least was born a cat!'

But, you see, Master Lepage had really some cause for his restlessness, for all this while he was struggling with an unseen enemy. Deep down in that innermost chamber of the heart—the door of which we most of us keep so tight shut because we know Truth sits within weighing and judging all our thoughts and actions, and letting us know from time to time just what she thinks about them in the very plainest language—in that innermost heart-chamber, I say, Lepage was aware that there was a busy, active feeling of shame and remorse. And while Truth pushed hard at the door inside to let the Feeling out, he pushed equally hard on the outside to keep the Feeling in. But when finally the snow began to fall, and the daylight lessen, and the storm grow fierce and fiercer, Truth pushed and bumped and banged upon the poor door so unmercifully that Master Lepage, sturdy veteran though he was, grew quite weary of opposing her. And so the busy Feeling popped out first its head, and then its two arms, and then squeezed itself out all together, and began racing up and down the whole length and breadth of the old soldier's heart in the most audacious manner.

'You were obstinate and conceited this morning,' said the Feeling; 'you wouldn't listen to John Paqualin, the charcoal-burner. Look at the snow!'

'The glass was rising,' answered Lepage. 'I am perfectly certain it was. And John Paqualin is a madman.'

'Madman yourself,' said the Feeling—for feelings are very free-spoken, you know, and don't mince matters—'madman yourself for letting your wife, who is a delicate woman, and that poor child, little Peter, run such a risk of cold, and fatigue, and perhaps worse.'

'Antony knows the way,' answered Lepage again. 'And he's an able fellow.'

'He is a boy, and like most boys is thoughtless and self-opinionated. He takes after you in that last, by the same token,' said the Feeling.

'I am a philosophic politician,' cried Lepage, somewhat hotly. 'I worship the goddess of Reason.'

'Do you?' said the Feeling. 'And these newspapers you were so anxious to sit at home and read to-day, full—as you perfectly well know—of garbled news, and one-sided statements, and of cheap party cries—they are the voice of Reason, are they?'

'Hang you!' answered Lepage—which was not at all a pretty way of answering. But then, you see, poor Master Lepage was getting very angry because he was very uncomfortable; and when persons are both uncomfortable and angry they are liable to make use of expressions which, very properly, are not printed in the French and English conversation books that you study in the schoolroom.—'I won't listen to you. So away with you. I have no doubt—'

'No doubt, haven't you?' said the Feeling. 'Well, I am glad to hear that.'

'No doubt at all—ten thousand plagues on you—no doubt at all, I say, that my wife and children will be home in ten minutes at the latest. Meanwhile I will read a little. I will improve my mind with the history of those grand, old Romans.'

So Lepage got down the history book, and it fell open at one of his favourite passages—the account of the Consul, Marcus Attilius Regulus, who, rather than break his word, left his home and kindred and gave himself up to his pitiless enemies, and bore in silence all the cruel tortures to which they subjected him.

'There was a man!' cried Lepage, as he wiped his spectacles with his red pocket-handkerchief.

'Yes, indeed, a very different man to you, Francis Louis Lepage,' said the Feeling.

'Why, why what do you mean? Twenty thousand cut-throat Prussians!—at least I am no coward. No one has ever accused me of that before. What was I ever afraid of?'

'Of a little trouble,' answered the Feeling. 'Of a walk, for instance, when you felt inclined to sit at home smoking—of what one or two silly, feather-headed fellows, who fancy themselves mighty sharp and clever, might perhaps say about you, if you were seen kneeling down beside your wife and sons, in the church there, with your head uncovered, praying God to forgive you your sins.—Pooh, don't talk about your courage to me!' said the Feeling.

Master Lepage sat very still for some time after that in the window-seat, with the Roman History wide open before him; but he did not care to go on reading about the Consul Regulus. He remembered how little Peter had climbed on his knee on Friday evening, and coaxed him to go to Nullepart to see the Infant Jesus and the stable; and had said—poor, little lad, what a nice, little face he had—Lepage rubbed the end of his hooked nose, and sniffed—that if only his father came with them they would all be so happy.

'Well, I hope they have been happy,' he said to himself. 'It is more than I have been, in any case.'

He turned and looked out of window. Ah! how it snowed, and how dark it was growing.

'And with this wind, on the moorland the snow will drift. If they have the intelligence of a blue owl between them they will have started early!' he cried quite fiercely. 'Ten thousand plagues—poor dear souls,' he added, for Master Lepage was getting a little confused somehow.

He hurried across the kitchen to the house-door and flung it wide open, and standing on the threshold, gazed long and earnestly down the dim forest path, drawing his shaggy eyebrows together till they stood out like chevaux de frise above his keen, grey eyes.

'Ho-la, ho-la, hey!' he shouted. But there was no answer save the roaring of the wind among the pines and the soft 'hush, hush,' of the falling snow.

Now for some time past Cincinnatus had been sitting very composedly staring with his great, yellow eyes into the glowing log fire, and meditating pleasantly on the inferiority of men to cats. But when Master Lepage, a prey to that remorseful Feeling which Truth had let loose to tramp where it would up and down his heart, threw the house-door wide open, the icy breath of the North Wind rushed wildly into the kitchen, and made our friend Cincinnatus feel uncommonly cool about the back.

'Neither calm nor ear-curls, dear me!' he murmured to himself as he rose slowly, stretching one fore leg and then the other, and then each hind leg in turn—shaking the last leg rapidly for a moment, too, because it was slightly cramped—and yawning the while so wide, that his pink tongue was curled up quite tight, like a rolling-pin, at the back of his mouth. Then he moved away with dignity, intending to take up his station upon the cushion of the big arm-chair that stood in the corner nicely out of the draught. But all of a sudden Cincinnatus heard something that made him jump all on one side with an arched back and a bristling tail, and say 'Pffzsh!' twice over, as loud as ever he had said it in his life.

It was an unfamiliar sound that so startled Cincinnatus, for Master Lepage was pulling strongly at the rope of the big bell that hung under the centre gable of the old house, and the urgent clang of its iron voice rang through the thick, snow-laden air far over the forest. The bell had been placed there long years before to summon neighbours—the house standing in a solitary place—in case of fire or accident. And now Lepage rang it with a double purpose, trusting that even if its friendly tones failed to reach the ears of the poor wanderers, it might at least bring Gustavus, the cowherd, from his father's cottage on the edge of the pastures, where he was spending the Sunday, and that he might help him search for the wife and children whom he loved so well.

'By my great-grandmother's whiskers!' exclaimed Cincinnatus, as he settled himself down on the chair cushion, 'what with draughts, and bell-ringing, and one thing and another, this house will soon be impossible for a cat of any pretensions to gentility. Compare it with the Sacristan's establishment, now, where you can't tell one day from another except by the smell of the different soups for dinner.—Delightful!—With an occasional vocal evening, too, in the back garden, when the moon is full. Lots are strangely unequal in this world!—Pffzsh! and to add to everything else, if there actually is not that intolerable charcoal-burner.'

John Paqualin stood on the threshold, a flaming torch of pine boughs in his hand; his long, unkempt hair was white with snow, and so was the tattered cloth cloak that hung in so many folds from his stooping shoulders. His eyes were bright and glowing.

'Ah! the wind,' he said, 'the glorious wind, the roar and the shout of it; the cry of the trees that strain, and the passionate snap of the branches—like heart-strings that snap under the blast of incurable sorrow. And the snow, soft and pure, and light as the coverlet a young mother lays on her first-born's cradle—getting a little too thick just now, though, that coverlet.—Eh! what's this? have you smothered the infant—laid it over the face as well? Be careful, then, with your—But the bell,' he added suddenly, interrupting himself, and catching hold of Master Lepage with his hard, thin fingers—'it called to me, while I was listening to the roll of the drums, and the blare of the trumpets, and the scream of the fifes in the forest there, and made me come hither whether I would or no. What do you want spoiling all my splendid wind-music with your infernal bell-clatter?'

'Want!' cried Lepage hoarsely; 'I want help.'

Paqualin laughed aloud.

'Hey-ho,' he said. 'Times are changed, are they? I never heard you sing that song before.'

Lepage let go the bell-rope, and raised his clenched fist. But he did not strike the blow. Something stopped him. Perhaps it was that same remorseful Feeling which Truth had let loose in his heart.

'Come inside, Paqualin,' he said quite quietly, after a moment or two. 'Now try to remember.—My wife and sons and our maid-servant went to church at Nullepart this morning. You did your best to prevent them going. You said the snow was coming, and it has come. They should have been back a good two hours ago, and they are not here yet.'

'Not here yet,' repeated the charcoal-burner slowly.

'No, not yet.' Lepage drew his hand across his eyes. 'Would to God,' he said, 'I had gone along with them.—But see now, I will light the lamp and leave the house-door open; and then will go out to search for them. You can find your way like a hound, they say, by night or day, through the forest. Will you come with me and help me?'

Paqualin stood in front of the fire; the snow on his hair and cloak melted and ran down, forming a little pool of water about his ill-shod feet.

'I am not over and above fond of you, Francis Lepage,' he said presently, 'as you most likely know already. Love and hatred alike can tell their own story without much need of spoken words. I think you a vain man and a hard one; but your wife is as pitiful as the saints in heaven. You want me to help you to find her? You have not got a dog to do the work for you, and so you'll take me. Ah, well! I've known the dog's place pretty well all my life long;—the kicks and the cuffs, and the grudging crust from the master's table; and then the "Here! my good fellow, good cur, here! nose down, tail up, the scent's cold, but still you're sharp enough to find it; and sweat and faint to catch the hare that will make your owner a savoury supper, while you slink home to the dirty straw and the mouldy crust again." Yes, yes—to be sure, I'll go with you and find them and bring them home; your fair wife and your children, and leave you happy and go back to my hut and the voices—not for your sake though, mind you, but for hers—the only woman whose eyes have ever looked kindly upon me.'

'Come on your own terms,' said Lepage.

Just then Gustavus, in his heavy boots, came clumping into the kitchen.

'The bell, master—has the red cow calved of a sudden?' he asked. For once in his life Gustavus appeared to be quite excited. He forgot to take off his hat or put down his big cotton umbrella, from off which the wet snow slipped in little avalanches, sthlop, on to the floor.

'Calf thyself, with thy great, stupid, cheese face!' cried the charcoal-burner.

Then while Lepage gave the cowherd his orders, and got some things together to take with them, Paqualin stood murmuring to himself, with his head bent low, and his lean, grimy hands stretched out towards the comfortable blaze of the fire:—