The baggage man was right in his conjecture, for the doctor had persuaded the polite conductor, whom he knew personally, to stop the train at Snowdon; and while Adah, shivering with cold, found her way up the narrow stairs into the rather comfortless quarters where she must spend the night, the doctor was kicking the snow from his feet and talking to Jim, the coachman from Terrace Hill. CHAPTER XXVII. ADAH AT TERRACE HILL. The next morning was cold and frosty, as winter mornings in New England are wont to be, and Adah, shivered involuntarily as from her uncurtained window she looked out upon the bare woods and the frozen fields covered with the snow of yesterday. Oh, how cold and dreary and desolate everything seemed on that December morning; and only Adah’s trust in Him who she knew would not forsake her kept her heart from fainting. Even this could not keep back her tears as she watched the coming of the eastern train, and wished that she could take it and go back to Spring Bank. Wistfully she watched the train which paused for a single moment and then sped on its way, just as there came a knock at the door, and the baggage man appeared. “If you please, ma’am,” he began, “the Terrace Hill carriage is here—brung over the doctor, who has took the train for New York. I told the driver how’t you wanted to go there. Shall I give him your trunk?” Adah answered in the affirmative, and then hastened to wrap up Willie. She was ready in a moment and descended to the room where Jim, the driver, stood waiting for her, eyeing her sharply, as if making up his mind with regard to her position. “A lady,” was his mental comment, and with as much politeness as if she had been Madam Richards herself, he opened the carriage door and held Willie while she entered, asking if she were comfortable, and peering a little curiously in Willie’s face, which puzzled him somewhat. “A near connection, I guess, and mighty pretty, too. I’m most sorry she’s come visiting just now, when old madam and the others is so cross. Them old maids will raise hob with the boy—nice little shaver,” thought the kind hearted Jim, as he hurried up his horses, looking back occasionally, and smiling at Willie, who had forgotten the ache of yesterday, and was crowing with delight as the carriage moved swiftly on. Once, as Adah caught his good-humored eye, she ventured to say to him, “Has Miss Anna procured a waiting-maid yet?” There was a comical gleam in Jim’s eye now, for Adah was not the first applicant he had taken up to Terrace Hill, and it was the memory of madam’s reception of them which made him laugh. He never suspected that this was Adah’s business, she was so unlike the others, and he answered frankly, “No, that’s about played out. They don’t come as thick as they did. Madam turned the last one out doors.” “Turned her out doors?” and Adah’s face was as white as the snow rifts they were passing.