After a while she got up and walked over to the window and stood beside it. The early twilight had become night, but the first snow of the season showed clearly in the unbroken whiteness of lawn and long, straight street and roofs of seeming marble. The burdened branches of crystal-coated trees swayed in the wind, and here and there, in the light cast from tall poles at long intervals apart, they gleamed in dazzling brilliance and flashing sheen. Past streets and houses on to open fields, her eyes, through the whirling, fast-falling snow, followed the Calverton road which led to Tree Hill, and in the darkness she saw the lights in the house twinkle faintly in the flake-filled air. Drawing the curtains farther aside, she stood close to the window and pressed her face upon it. Behind the house and below the apple orchard at a snow-covered mound she was now in spirit, and under her breath she made effort to speak bravely. "A lonely old woman, Colleen. A lonely old woman, but the old must not get in the way of the young. Your eyes have been upon me. You've made me remember youth comes but once, and life--is love." The opening of the door made her turn quickly. Snow-covered, faces flushed with the sting of biting wind, vivid and full of glow, they stood before her--Mary and John. "I had to see you." Unfastening the fur coat, Mary handed it to John, then threw her arms around Miss Gibbie. "Are you sure you are perfectly well? This morning you seemed to have a little cold, and I couldn't--" "--Rest until she saw for herself how you were to-night." John put the coat on the chair. "I told her I'd come and see you, but that wouldn't do." "Of course it wouldn't!" Again the face held between her hands was searched anxiously, and her eyes lighted with glad relief. "I was so worried. I'm never going to let anybody see for me how you are. I'm going to always see for myself!" End of Project Gutenberg's Miss Gibbie Gault, by Kate Langley Bosher