Joy and hope danced in our hearts when, clear and sunny, the promised day at length had come, the snow five and a half feet deep--the greatest depth of snow within the memory of the "oldest inhabitant"--the mercury full ten degrees below zero. I had just changed my dress for the fifth time, and sister Anna was offering me this consolation, "I must say, Clara, that that is the most unbecoming dress you have, you look like a perfect scare-crow," when the sound of sleigh-bells coming up the avenue, sent my heart up in my throat, and myself quicker than lightning down to the "hall-door," there to welcome--not my darling Edgar and his proud, beautiful sister, and Anna's Adonis lieutenant, and Brother Dick's pretty little Fanny--no, none of these, oh, no! who but my long-visaged, good-for-nothing cousin Jehoiakim Johnson. "Fiddle-de-dee!" exclaimed a voice at my elbow; and my disappointed sister skipped, with chattering teeth, back into the house. The stage drove off, after depositing cousin Jehoiakim and a Noah's-ark of a trunk. "Wall, Cousin Clarry!" exclaimed he, springing toward me with one of his own peculiar bear-like bounds. "How du you du? I guess you didn't expect me this time, no how." "I can't say that I did," said I; "but do come in, this air is enough to freeze one." "Wall, here I am again," said he, rubbing his great hands together before the blazing hickory. "But if that _wasn't_ a tarnel cold drive; and if this isn't a nation good fire, then I don't know. But how are uncle and aunt, and Cousin Anna, and Dick, and little Harry?" "All quite well. Where have you been since you left here, cousin?" "Why I went right to Cousin Hezekiah's; but I did not stay there quite two months, because little Prudence caught the brain fever, and I was obliged to keep so still that it was very unpleasant. I went from there to Cousin Ebenezer's. Wall, I stayed to Cousin Eb's four months or so; then I went to stay a couple of months with Cousin Pildash and Axy, (Achsa.) So this morning I came from Uncle Abimelech's. I only stayed there a few weeks, because--But, Cousin Clarry, du look! if there isn't a sleigh-load of folks coming." I _did_ look, and saw coming through the great open gate, and up the avenue, a sleigh, all covered with gold and brown, glittering in the sun's setting rays. I saw the long, white manes of the ponies, and the heavy plumes of my beautiful friend, Jane, streaming far in the wind; and then I saw little Fanny's bright, happy face, and the fierce moustache of Anna's lieutenant; and then I saw a pair of dark, earnest eyes, full of devotion, gazing into mine as though at the shrine of their soul's ideal. Never shall I forget the look they wore, so inexpressibly full of affection was it.