Among the passers-by was Mrs. Barnes. She lived in the little gray, weather-beaten house just under the hill. She was neither shiftless nor drunken, yet she was pitifully poor, and was a widow as well, with three little children. She could "dig," though to "beg" she was ashamed, and managed by hard work and much pinching and stinting to piece out a living. What a tempting sight was this goodly array to the half-frozen woman! Nobody knew but herself how hard she had tried to get enough bedding together for the winter; how she had saved every old scrap and pieced it up and eked out the cotton with newspapers that she had secured from Miss Rachel; and yet, with all that, the old house was so open it was going to be hard work to keep warm in the long, cold nights. She stood and looked at those soft double blankets and thick comfortables, and said to herself, "What a thing it must be, eh, to have such lots of bedclothes; to pile on as many as you please and be warm as toast all night! One, two, three, four, five, six, seven—I don't know how many blankets, double at that, and ever and ever so many comfortables, besides quilts and spreads. And there she is with all them warm things and nobody to keep warm but herself, and here I be, with three little children and no warm things. Oh dear! Why couldn't the two 'a' gone together, I should like to know." Then she brushed away a tear with the corner of her shawl and went on her way. Miss Whittaker sat near the side window and noticed that the Widow Barnes stopped and looked over the fence. Somehow she didn't like to see her standing there, her thin dress blowing in the wind, her faded old shawl drawn close about her, and with such anxious-looking eyes fixed on those blankets. But now the obnoxious figure in the old shawl moved on, and Miss Rachel could once more give her undivided attention to a very difficult piece of embroidery she was engaged in making for a fair. That very night winter began in earnest. The north wind and the frost went out hand in hand. They built bridges over streams, made rocky roads, and crept in here and there, unbidden and unwelcome. They found their way to Miss Rachel's chamber, but she got a victory over them by simply reaching out her hand and drawing over her self a soft comfortable. The same unmerciful couple visited the poor as well as the rich; they crept into the cracks and crannies of the Widow Barnes' little house. She awoke with chills creeping over her, and got up and hunted about in the dark for something more to put over the two little girls in the trundle-bed, who had once or twice sleepily called out "cold!" She tucked her shawl and their old sacks about them, then snuggled little Bessie close in her arms and "wished for the day."