Huntoon strode on as perfectly happy as is often given to mortals to be in this sadly mixed world. There is an elation in the solitude of a wilderness at any time, a sense of freedom, of room for soul-expansion, and there is a beauty in a snow-clad forest that summer cannot match. The shadows lay in long blue patches on the snow, the pine trees held a load of white on their wide-spreading branches, each clump of green capped with glittering frost. The gaunt branches of oak and maple etched themselves against the blue of the morning sky. Everything in nature was radiant. Was it likely that the heart of the young man who walked with the rein over his arm was less jubilant than the scene around him? One thing only troubled him. He could think of nothing to say. At last he saw a bunch of scarlet berries peeping out of the snow at the roots of a great pine tree. He stepped aside and picked them. When he came back he handed them to Peggy. "What are these for?" she asked. "I thought you might wear them." "So I do not look well enough as I am?" "I said not so." "No, but you thought I could look better, and so I could not have been perfect in your eyes." "They hang offerings on the neck of the statue of the Madonna. It is not that she may look better; but I suppose it brings her nearer to see her wearing their gifts, be they never so humble." [Illustration] "You are quite a courtier, Master Huntoon," Peggy answered with a nervous laugh; "you are thrown away upon these colonial wilds and should betake yourself to Whitehall. The King would doubtless lend a favorable ear to your silver tongue." "Alas!" sighed Romney, in the folly of his youth, "what care I what the _King_ might say, if the _Queen_ will not listen to me?" What further softness he might have ventured on, no man knoweth, for there is no setting limits to the weakness of lovers; but his speech was interrupted by the crack of the fowling-piece from behind, and looking back they saw Cornwaleys stooping to pick up a brace of quail which his gun had just brought down; and which he straightway tossed over the saddle of Anne, the serving-woman, bidding her pick them as she rode. The sun climbed higher and higher till its genial warmth began to make itself felt. The icicles let fall drop after drop of water, slowly trickling themselves away. The snow-banks melted into gurgling streams, which ran along on the surface till they sank noiseless into the softened ground. The air, balmy with the scent of pine trees and mild with the bracing mildness of dry midwinter, pulsated in the perpendicular rays of the noonday sunlight. "Come, friends," called Giles Brent, reining in his horse and turning in his saddle to await the arrival of the rest of his party, who could by no means keep the pace he set, "I know not how it is with the rest of you, but one man here hath an appetite which tells him that the dinner hour is come." "Here is another!" cried Cornwaleys.