On one side she saw the Widow Barnes and her children. They sat amidst piles of blankets, heaped all about them, and they were soft and fleecy as her own had been. Oh! If she had but one to keep out this deathly chill. She screamed out again in an agony of torture, begging that just one blanket might be thrown down to her. But a mocking voice only came back to her, and it said, "Stop up the chinks, and I think you'll be comfortable." In shivering terror she awoke, relieved beyond measure to find herself at home in her own bed, and then there flashed over her mind the story of Goody Blake and Harry Gill. Had the Widow Barnes been praying that she might never be warm again? And must she go through life with her teeth chattering as they were now? Mingling confusedly with the words of the old ballad, "Chatter, chatter, chatter still," came a rush of Scripture texts, vivid and startling as if a voice spoke them in her ears, and they were all about the poor. She was so thoroughly stiffened by cold and fear that she could scarcely rise and go to the closet for the needed covering which on this night she had forgotten to place by her bedside. Miss Rachel had been accustomed to draw up and write out, at the commencement of each year, a series of severe resolutions; the fact that she never kept one half of them not abating their rigor in the least. But never in calmest moments, with pen in hand and diary before her, had any such earnest, self-denying resolves been made as were now made by the woman who stood in night array in her closet, holding a flickering lamp in one hand, and with the other taking down blankets and comfortables and piling them on chairs. That done, she took a bountiful supply for herself and went back to bed. Her shivering soon ceased, and for the remainder of the night she slept the sleep of the just. As a matter of course, when the daylight streamed into her room, and the red sun sent a slanting bar across her bed, Satan told Miss Rachel that it was perfect foolishness to pay any attention to a dream, and that it was simply improvident to go and give away that great pile of bedding she had laid out; that a couple of old ragged quilts would answer every purpose. He was obliged, however, to leave her in peace, for when Miss Rachel shut her lips tight, and said, "I shall do it," in that decisive way of hers, there was no need of further parley. No sooner were the roads broken than she went in search of a man with a sleigh. When all was ready, it was a sight to behold—at least to the eyes of cold and hungry people. In the very bottom was a quantity of dry wood, then came a layer of meat, potatoes, apples, flour. And this was crowned by blankets and comfortables, more than enough for two beds in the very coldest weather. "I'll see if I don't get the upper hand of this mean, selfish spirit," Miss Rachel had ejaculated, as she stowed an extra blanket on the load at the last minute.