“Judge Priest,” he said, “what do you suppose those two fellows over yonder at Montjoy's are thinking about you right now?” “Henry,” said Judge Priest, “fur thinkin' whut they do about me, I reckin both of them boys could be churched.” VII. FORREST'S LAST CHARGE TOWARD morning, after a spell of unusually even-tempered and moderate weather, it blew up cold, snowed hard for two or three hours, and turned off to be clear and freezing. The sun, coming up at seven-thirty-five, according to his curtailed December schedule, peeped out on a universe that was clothed all in white, whereas when he retired the night before in his west bedroom he left it wearing a motley of faded yellows and seasoned greens. Swinging in the east as a pale coppery disk, he blinked his astonishment through a ragged grey veil of the last of the storm clouds. Others beside the sun were taken by surprise. It was the first snowfall of the year and a good, hard, heavy one. Down our way, some winters, we had hardly any snows at all; then, again, some winters we had a plenty; but scarcely ever did we have them before Christmas. This one came as a profound and an annoying visitation, taking the community at large unawares and unprepared, and making a great nuisance of itself from the start. Practically without exception, doorstep hydrants had tight colds in the head that morning. On being treated with lavings of hot water they dripped catarrhally from their cast-iron noses for a little while and then developed the added symptoms of icicles. Cooks were hours late coming to cook breakfast, and when they did come uttered despairing moans to find range boilers frozen up and kitchen taps utterly unresponsive to first-aid measures. At some houses it was nearly eight o'clock before the milkman got round, with wooden runners under his milk wagon in place of wheels and rosaries of rusted sleigh bells on the necks of his smoking team. Last year's rubber boots came out of the closet and any old year's toy sled came out of the attic. The old negro man who did whitewashing in the spring, picked blackberries for his summertime living, and in the fall peddled corn-shuck doormats and scaly-bark hickory nuts, made the circuit of his regular patrons, equipped with a shovel over his shoulder and his venerable feet done up in burlaps, to shovel footpaths for a price. Where the wind piled the snow in little drifts he left a wake behind him as though a baby elephant had floundered through there.