In a moment the deacon was fully dressed and he scuttled as merrily and noisily down the resounding stairway as a gust of autumn wind running through a patch of russet leaves. Through the hall and kitchen he bustled and out into the woodshed, where he ran against old Towser, the big Newfoundland watch-dog, who stood in the passage expectantly watching his coming. [Illustration: "_Ha, none of that, you woolly-coated rogue, you._"] "A happy New Year to you, Towser, old boy," he cried, and, seizing the huge dog by his shaggy coat, he wrestled with him like a merry-hearted boy. "A happy New Year to you, old fellow," he repeated, as the dog broke into a series of joyful barks; "speak it right out, Towser. God made you as full of fun as he has the rest of us, and a good deal fuller than many of your kind, and mine, too," and with this backhanded hit at the vinegar-visaged and acidulous-hearted of his own species, the deacon shuffled along the crisp, icy path toward the barn, while Towser gamboled through the deep snow and plunged into the huge, fleecy drifts in as merry a mood as his merry master. "A happy New Year to you, old Jack," he called out to his horse, as he entered the barn, and Jack neighed a happy return, more expectant, perhaps, of his breakfast of oats than appreciative of the greeting. "And a happy New Year to you, you youngster," he shouted to the colt, who, being at liberty to roam at will, had already appropriated a section of the hay-mow to his own satisfaction. "Ha, none of that, you woolly-coated rogue, you," he cried, as he jumped aside to escape a kick that the bunch of equine mischief anticly snapped at him. "None of that, you little unconverted sinner, you. I verily believe the parson is right, and that 'In Adam's fall We sinned all--' men and beasts, colts and children, all in one lot." And so, talking to himself and his cattle, the jolly little man, whose good-heartedness represented more genuine orthodoxy than the whole Westminster catechism, bustled merrily about the barn and did his chores, while the cockerels crowed noisily from their perches overhead, the fat white pigs grunted in lazy contentment from their warm beds of straw, and the oxen, with their large, luminous eyes, gazed benevolently at him as he crammed their mangers generously full with the fragrant hay that smelled sweetly of the flowers and odorous meadow lands, where in the warm summer sunshine it had ripened for the welcome scythe. How happy is life, in whatever part of this great fragrant world of ours it is lived, when men live it happily; and how gloomy seems its sunshine, even, when seen through the shadows and darkness of our surly moods.