WOMEN IN RED SHAWLS The Reverend Sage, withdrawing his hallowed cloth from contact with even baser politics, had moved over to one of the windows, and was gazing out between the curtains across the gale-swept porch into the blackness beyond. Through the window-light the fine snow swirled in shadowy clouds, like an ever-moving screen beyond which lay mystery. He shivered a little, poor chap, at the thought of going out again into the bitter, unbelievable night—at the thought of his cold little home at the farther end of the village where the drifts were high and the wind blew fiercely over the treeless, unsheltered tract known as Sharp’s Field. He was thinking, too, of the girl he had brought down with him as a bride in the sunny days of June, when all the land was green and the air was soft and warm and there was the tang of fresh earth and the scent of flowers for grateful nostrils. He was thinking of her and the mile walk she would have to take with him into the very teeth of the buffeting gale when this visit was over. He sighed. She had come to this wretched little town from a great city where there were horse-cars and cable-trains and hacks without number; where houses and flats were warm and snug; where the shrieking storms from off the lake were defied by staunch brick walls; where the nights were short and the days were told by hours; where there were lights and life, restaurants and theaters, music and dancing. He thought of the cheap but respectable boarding-house on the cross-street just off Lincoln Park and the warm little room on the third floor where he had lived and studied for two full years. It was in this house that he had met Josephine Judge. She was the daughter of the kindly widow who conducted the boarding-house—a tall, slim girl who used slang and was gay and blithesome, and had ambitions! Ambitions? She wanted to become an actress. She was stage-struck. It was quite wonderful, the way she could mimic people, and “recite,” and sing the sprightly songs from “Pinafore,” “La Mascotte,” “Fra Diavolo,” “Fatinitza,” “The Bohemian Girl,” and could quote with real unction the choicest lines of “Rosalind,” “Viola,” “Juliet” and other rare young women of a flowery age. And she had made him and all the rest of the boarders laugh when she “took off” Pat Rooney, Joe Murphy, the Kernells, Gus Williams, “Oofty Gooft” and the immortal “Colonel Mulberry Sellers.”