She had thought she heard a step on the crisp snow, but probably it was the crackling of the protesting trees, for the weight of ice was almost more than they could bear. The lights in the scattered houses shone red and steady in the still glitter. A full moon dimmed the stars, but a keen glance showed that every one was in its place and performing its duty in the glorious plan. A white, holy night! Only such a night as comes to high, dry places where the cold is so subtle that its power is disguised; where the green-black pines stand motionless in the hard whiteness, and where the silence is only broken by mysterious cracklings and groanings, when Nature stirs in the heart of the seeming Death, while she weaves the robe of Spring. Joyce was beginning to feel the wonders of her little world; she was timidly feeling out the meaning of things. Sometimes the sensation hurt and frightened her; often it soothed and thrilled her to deep ecstasy. Presently she left the window, and turned to the warmth and glow inside. Jude's old cottage had been transformed, and Joyce was developing into one of those women who are inherent home-makers. Such women can accomplish more with the bare necessities of life than others with the world's wealth at their command. It is like personal magnetism, difficult to understand, impossible to explain. Comfort, grace, colour and that sweet disorder which is the truest order. Chairs at the right angles, tables convenient, but never in the way. A roaring wood fire on a dustless hearth; pictures hung neither too high nor too low, and no sense of emptiness nor crowding. A room that neither compelled attention, nor irritated the nerves--a place to rest in, love in, and go out from, with a longing to return. On the south side of the room, Jude, with Gaston's financial and personal assistance, had added a bay window. That innovation had quite stirred St. Ange. Ralph Drew had designed it and, through the summer, while the building was in process, the inhabitants had watched and expressed their opinions freely and enjoyably. "Up to Joyce's," Billy Falstar, that indefatigable gatherer and scatterer of news, announced, "they are smashing a hole in the off side of the house." An hour later, a good-sized audience was occupying the open space on the south side of the garden. "Why don't you have it run _in_, instead of out?" Peter Falstar suggested. "It's just tempting Providence to let out more surface to catch the winter blasts." "And it's wasteful as thunder," added Tom Smith. "Just so much more heating of out-door space enclosed in that there semi-circle." "There ain't nothing to see from that side, anyway," Leon Tate remarked, as if possibly the others had not considered that. "If you want a more extended, and rounded outlook, you'd better smash the north side out. From that hole you could see the village, and what not." "And the Black Cat," Jock Filmer drawled.