While she still looked out flakes suddenly began to fly, hardly falling at first, but poised tentatively, fluctuating athwart the scene, presently thickening, quickening, obscuring it all, isolating the woods with an added sense of solitude since the sight of the world and the sound of it were so speedily annulled. Even the creak of the wagon-wheels was muffled. Through the semicircular aperture in the front of the wagon-cover the horns of the oxen were dimly seen amidst the serried flakes; the snow whitened the backs of the beasts and added its burden to their yoke. Once as they jogged on she fancied again that she heard hoof-beats--this time a long way ahead, thundering over a little bridge high above a swirling torrent, that reverberated with a hollow tone to the faintest footfall. “Jes somebody ez hev passed we-uns, takin' the short-cut by the bridle-path,” she ruminated. No pursuer, evidently. Everything was deeply submerged in the snow before they reached the dark little cabin nestling in the Cove. Motionless and dreary it was; not even a blue and gauzy wreath curled out of the chimney, for the fire had died on the hearth in their absence. No living creature was to be seen. The fowls were huddled together in the hen-house, and the dogs had accompanied the family to town, trotting beneath the wagon with lolling tongues and smoking breath; when they nimbly climbed the fence their circular footprints were the first traces to mar the level expanse of the door-yard. The bare limbs of the trees were laden; the cedars bore great flower-like tufts amidst the interlacing fibrous foliage. The eaves were heavily thatched; the drifts lay in the fence corners. Everything was covered except, indeed, one side of the fodder-stack that stood close to the barn. Evelina, going out to milk the cow, gazed at it for a moment in surprise. The snow had slipped down from it, and lay in rolls and piles about the base, intermixed with the sere husks and blades that seemed torn out of the great cone. “Waal, sir, Spot mus' hev been hongry fur true, ter kem a-foragin' this wise. Looks ez ef she hev been fairly a-burrowin.” She turned and glanced over her shoulder at tracks in the snow--shapeless holes, and filling fast--which she did not doubt were the footprints of the big red cow, standing half in and half out of the wide door, slowly chewing her cud, her breath visibly curling out on the chill air, her great lips opening to emit a muttered low. She moved forward suddenly into the shelter as Evelina started anew toward it, holding the piggin in one hand and clasping the baby in the other arm. [Illustration: Stole noiselessly in the soft snow 145]