The dark winter had now come on, and anxiously poor Weary Heart watched the lozenged panes. He saw the branches stand up bare and desolate against the gray and chilly sky; but soon he saw beautiful things come and sport upon them. The snow piled itself in fairy ridgeways along the boughs, and even on the slenderest twigs; then the sun would shine brightly out for an hour at mid-day, and melt the quiet snow, and the laughing drops would chase each other along the branches, sometimes losing all identity, each in the bosom of its fellow—sometimes falling in glittering showers to the ground. [And he saw that it was from these glittering showers that the snowdrops sprang]. Then, when the sun was gone down, the frost would come; and in the morning the silver drops would be found, spell-bound in their mirth; some hanging in long, clear pendants, full of bright lights and beautiful thoughts, far above the rest—and others, shorter and less brilliant, with one part transparent, and another part looking more like the snow of which they were born. But these last always hung hand-in-hand. And when the sun came out again by day, these were always the last to disappear; for they also were like faithful and kindly hearts. They were partly raised far above their original nature, and yet they still bore many traces of the source from whence they sprang. And when the beautiful crystals faded away like the brilliant yet chilly mind, which has no sympathy or trust for its fellows, the others would still remain, hand-in-hand, to cheer and deck the naked tree. Sometimes, too, in the early days of February, the sun would shine fiercely out ere the green leaves had come to shade the room at noon-day; but then came a winged messenger to sit on the dry branches, and to tell the Weary Heart, in a sweet song, that the real spring was not _yet_ upon the earth; but that at the right time the leaves would most surely reappear, and “fail not.” And when he had repeated his message, he would add another stanza, and tell how _he_ needed the shady foliage even more than man himself, but that he pined not for it, because _he knew_ that to all things there was an appointed season; and that when his nesting-time came, so would the green leaves come also to shelter and encircle the frail home of his young ones.