Oh! what a glorious sight! Yet, to be graphic, I must compare great things to small, or at least illustrate the former by the latter. The house from which she looked seemed now to be situated in the bottom of a vast, deep, bowl-shaped valley, its colors now, in midwinter, dark green, with gleams of snow-white, the whole canopied by deep blue, flushed in the east by opal shades of rose, gold, violet, and emerald. The mountains loomed all around in a circle of irregular peaks, all thickly covered with pines, cedars, spruce and other evergreen trees, which grew closest at the base and thinnest near the tops, which were mostly bare, and now, in December, covered, with snow. Looking from the front window of her room Palma could see but half the circle—the eastern half, made beautiful now by the rising sun. The sun had not yet come in sight; but even as Palma gazed he suddenly sparkled up from behind the cliffs, gilding all the opal hues of morning with dazzling splendor. “Oh, what a happiness to live in a home like this!” she said to herself; “how good one ought to be to become half worthy of it! Oh, my! oh, my!” She heard voices speaking below her window. In the clearness of the atmosphere she recognized them as her husband’s and his uncle’s. The former was saying: “Why, they are not a bit afraid of you! They seem to know you.” “Oh, yes! they do.” And the speakers became silent. “It’s ole marse, a-feedin’ ob de snowbirds,” Hatty explained. “Ole marse is jes’ a angel, ma’am! He’s good to eberybody an’ eberyfing.” “You love your master very much, then, Hatty?” said Palma. “Lub him? Dat ain’t no word for it! ’Cause, yo’ see, ma’am, I lubs so many bodies an’ so many fings, too, even down to red ribbins an’ cakes! But I puffickly ’dores ole marse!” said the girl, smiling until her eyes closed and all the lines of her features were horizontal. Palma had gone to the washstand, where now the sound of splashing water prevented the hearing of any talk. Then, while she was drying her face and neck, she said: “Run, Hatty, and take my traveling dress from the hook in the closet, and carry it out and shake it, and brush it, and bring it back to me. I won’t take time now to unpack my trunks to get another.” Almost before she ceased to speak the girl, glad to serve her, had darted into the closet, seized the dress, and was running off with it. By the time Palma had dried her skin and dressed her hair Hatty was back with the dark blue flannel suit, looking as fresh as when it came out of Lovelace & Silkman’s establishment. As soon as Palma finished her toilet she hurried downstairs and was met at the foot by the aged master of the house, who had just come in from his bird feeding. He wore a faded, dark blue dressing-gown, thickly wadded, and wrapped closely about his fragile form. He looked, if possible, fairer, frailer and more of a mere chrysalis than ever.