Now she proceeded to “put the big pot into the little pot,” to use a rural expression, singularly descriptive of the ambitious impossibilities achieved. She did it chiefly by proxy, directing from her seat in the chimney corner Alethea’s movements, but wearing the absorbed, anxious countenance of strategy and resource. The glory of the victory is due rather to the head that devised than to the hands that executed; as in greater battles the pluck of the soldiery is held subordinate to the science of the commander. It was no mean result that smoked upon the table when the sound of Buck’s slow hoofs was heard on the snow without, and a warm welcome was in readiness besides. A cheerful transition it was from the bleak solitudes: the fire flared up the chimney; the peppers and the peltry hanging from the rafters might sway in draughts that naught else could feel; the snow without was manifested only by the drifts against the batten shutters, visible in thin white lines through the cracks, and in that intense silence of the muffled earth which appeals to the senses with hardly less insistence than sound. Ben’s aspect was scarcely so negative, so colorless, as usual, despite his peculiarly pale brown hair and beard. The sharp sting of the cold air had brought a flush to his face; his honest, candid gray eyes were bright and eager. His manner was very demure and propitiatory, especially to Mrs. Sayles, who conducted herself with an ideally motherly air, which was imbued with many suggestions of approval, even of respect. “Howdy, Ben, howdy? We-uns air mighty glad ter see ye, Ben.” “Don’t ye git too proud, Ben,” said Mrs. Jessup, roused from her inertia by the unwonted excitements of her journey to the cove, and, since she was not too lazy to exercise her perversity, thoroughly relishing it. “They’d be jes’ ez glad ter see ennybody,—it air so beset an’ lonesome up hyar. They fairly tore me ter pieces with thar questions whenst I kem.” And this reminded old man Sayles that the details of the funeral could be elicited from Ben Doaks. Upon request the young man lugubriously rehearsed such portions of the sermon as he could remember, prompted now and then by Mrs. Jessup, who did not disdain to refresh his recollection when it flagged; he even lifted his voice in a dolorous refrain to show how a certain “hyme chune” went. But his attention wandered when supper was over, and he observed Alethea, with a bowl of scraps in her hand and a shawl over her head, starting toward the door. The dogs ran after her, with voracious delight in the prospect of supper, and bounded up against the door so tumultuously that she had difficulty in opening it. “Goin’ ter feed the dogs, Lethe?” said Ben Doaks, seizing the opportunity. “I’ll keep ’em back till ye kin git out.”