She was not cold. It was growing warmer as she made her way down to lower levels, and much of the time she walked rapidly. Only when she cautiously crossed the mountain torrent, icy and motionless save that in its crystal heart a stream like a silver arrow swiftly and silently glided, glancing in the light, she felt the chill of the day. For the foot-bridge was hung with icicles and enveloped in deceptive snow that fell at the touch of her foot, and she began to be afraid she would lose so much time here that she might be late and miss some part of the sermon. When the cove became visible, one might fail to discern any expression of the social opportunities for which Mrs. Jessup valued it. In its wintry guise it was peculiarly open to the eye: its forests were bare; the unbroken snow lay in its broad fields in lieu of its harvested crops; its road was distinguishable by the narrow interval between the zigzag fences; the serpentine lines of the river were defined by its snow-fringed laureled banks; here and there a curl of blue smoke arose from the chimney of a little house heavily thatched with drifts. The church had for Alethea many melancholy associations. She paused at the palings, remembering the night when she had stood here in the silent moonshine, in the full summer-tide, and the vapors had shifted about, and in their midst she had seen the boy whom they had said was dead. How much had come into her life since then, and, alas, how much had gone forth forever! The snow hung heavy in the pine-trees; the faint moon was in the fretted gray sky above the mountains. The little house was dark and drear under its whitened roof. The snow was melting close to the chimney. She heard the drops trickling down. The mounds in the inclosure were very distinct. Some of them had a square of palings close about: those were the graves of the well-to-do people of the cove. She could hardly have said, but for her life-long knowledge of the place, which was the new-made grave where lay the man who had pointed at her with his last living impulse, whose last word was intended for her, becoming dumb on his lips as his life died in him,—a word never to be heard, never to be answered. Here they all were, little ephemeral mounds in the midst of the great eternities of the mountains. She wondered if there were words to be said buried with the others; deeds to be done or undone; hopes unrealized; promises deferred until now when time was no more for them. Life was transitory, and so she was minded anew of the preacher.