She knelt before the stove, cautiously placed her newest product, and rose muttering, her freckled cheeks, powdered with flour, rouged with heat from the oven. “Don’t tell me!” she grumbled, as though taxing Miles with the weather’s iniquity. “Yisterday, fall. To-morrow, winter. Onseasonable, and ondignified, like’s if the powers was playin’ us tricks. ’Tain’t the wet kind that goes, but the dry that keeps aholt. Below what’s-name, too. Beats Old Roper!” Through the glistening stillness came a thin, mellow jingle. “Sleigh-bells!” Ella nodded, with an air of angry wisdom. “Another year gone. Shoo-fly! No more’n last week, first mud to out on wheels; and here’s them things a-calangalin’ round again!” Helpless against this revolution of the seasons, Miles laughed. “Not my fault, Ella.” Listening to the jog-trot cadence of the bells, he added, “They’re coming here.” “Ain’t neither--yes, they are too!” Ella bustled to the back window, and, twisting her apron into knots, stared eagerly up the smooth, white heave of the hill. “Who’ll it be, s’pose? All is, he’ll break out our ro’d for us! I’d ought to reco’nize any bells o’ twenty mile round--do, too. Them’s either Old-Hab, or Lazy-Hab, or Cal Martin the tinker.” Against the pale sky, with a slow and broken jangling of bells, appeared a sorrel horse. He shambled steeply down, knee-deep in drifts, yet straining to hold back a broad sled. The driver, swathed to the eyes, precariously embraced a sled stake, like a trained bear hugging his pole. “Old-Hab’s hoss,” reported Ella. “Ho there, Danamite!” sounded a smothered growl. The bells cut their music short; and a moment later Old-Hab himself battered the door, and, entering, unwound a woolen muffler white-furred with frozen breath. His bony cheeks, at last uncovered, shone glazed and flaming. “By the hokey,” he grumbled, breathing sharp and stamping his yellow “larrigans” on the oilcloth. “Smells good in here, Miss Dawson. Black as night, too. Takes this piercifyin’ cold to aidge a man’s stummick and file his teeth. Dretful holler, this weather!” “Eatin’! What did I say?” With the ready grievance of a comedian, Ella turned to Miles. “Eatin’, I says, is the first word Hab Belden speaks inside this house! There ye go.” The teamster, unmoved, began to shed jacket after jacket,--a grimy sheep-fleece, a worn reefer, a faded blanket coat belted with tarred rope. After each struggle he diminished in bulk, as though peeling layer by layer to the core; till at last, dashing his cap on the discarded pile, he emerged like Burleigh from the Lord Treasurer, and stood forth as a little, wiry, beardless man in a brown jersey. His narrow body, sharp, frost-red features, and Indian hair brushed fiercely back in coarse lines, gave him an eager, windswept air, as of a weather-cock facing the winter blast. In a gusty way he veered upon Ella.