Alethea was glad to be alone. The burden of the work, however mechanically accomplished, had pressed heavily upon her consciousness. The acrimony, the continual talk, the trivial stir, had impinged jarringly upon her deeper absorption. The infinite solitude of the wilds, the austere dignity of their silence, harmonized with her mood. She had craved to hear the preaching. She was spiritually an hungered. She turned to the consolations of religion. Now and then she drew a deep sigh as she went, and paused and looked about her with eyes that felt as if they had wept long; but they were dry, and tears for a time had been strangers. She was fain to note closely to-day the aspects of the outer world, or, woodland creature though she was, she might have missed her way in the tortuous intricacies that the road had followed in striving to make and keep a footing among the steeps. Icicles still hung to the dark faces of the crags, grim and distinct upon the snowy slopes about them. On every side towered the great trees, their gigantic proportions more incredibly imposing when fully revealed in bare bole and branch than when the foliage had veiled them. Now and then she met a mist, stealing softly, silently along, or lurking like some half-affrighted apparition in the depth of ravines, or peering down from over unmeasured heights. As the road turned abruptly she saw a mass of white vapor against the sky,—nay, it was Thunderhead, the great cloud-mountain. There was movement upon the slopes of the peak. The mists shifted to and fro, with vague gray shadows mysteriously attendant upon them. Sudden gusts of wind swept through the forest, rousing it to motion, to weird murmurs. She gathered her brown shawl about her and drew her bonnet forward. And then the wind would slip away, and she would hear it repeating its mystic apostrophe far off among the ravines of Thunderhead, or Big Injun, or another of the mighty company of the border. Through rifts of the clouds came sometimes a pallid glimpse of the midday moon. It had a strange ghastly gleam on this sad gray day, above the great legendary mountain. She stood and gazed at it for a moment in vague fascination, then she turned and went on. She saw occasionally the footprints of small animals in the snow. Often she looked after them, for she had the compassionate tenderness of a compatriot for these little mountaineers. Once she noticed a rabbit that crouched chilled and trembling for an instant, and then went leaping through the frozen weeds.