As early as the first of December the river was frozen over. With the thoughtlessness of a young girl upon whom the cares of housekeeping were exclusively and suddenly thrown, she had neglected to provide for the exigencies of the severe winters of that particular locality. She had even from delicacy omitted to send for the wages of the few negroes out on hire—and the first of December, when the ground was two feet deep in snow, and the river was a solid block of ice, and even the bay near the shore was crusted over, found Sophie Churchill destitute of the common necessaries of life. To augment the evils of her position, the old negress—who in health was in herself a host—was laid up with the rheumatism. At this time Sophie was so poor that her little charge (now three years old) possessed but one suit of clothes; and every night, after putting the little one to bed, would Sophie go, up to her knees in snow, away off to the forest, a quarter of a mile distant, to collect brush, to supply the fire the next day—her little arms and moderate strength serving to bring so small a quantity at a time that she would have to make this trip half-a-dozen times a night before a sufficient quantity was collected. Then she would have to take the bucket and go to a dell in the same forest to bring water, and after coming home would take the sleeping Hagar’s only suit of clothes and wash and iron them for the next day, solaced while at her work by the mutterings of the old negress, who, with the irritability of sickness, would growl from her lair— “Oh, ho! kin tote water, kin you—thought how you was to _deleky_ an’ _saft_ (_delicate and soft_) to tote water from de spring,” &c., &c. Sophie never paid the slightest attention to this ill-temper; she seemed not to hear it. It was remarkable that Sophie never once in the whole course of her life was heard to utter a complaint, lay a charge, or make a reproach; and that she was perfectly unconscious of the moral beauty of her own patience. She merely acted out her own nature without thinking about it. Sophie had one faithful friend in the aged pastor of the parish—but he, with his multifarious duties, could seldom find time to visit her. The Rev. Senex May, with his young wife and only child, lived in a pretty cottage on the other side of the river, in a grove half way between the village and the forest. His youthful wife, Emily Wilde, had been an orphan, a governess from New England, living in the family of a wealthy planter in the neighborhood. Weary of her friendless, homeless, and unsettled life, she had given her hand where her deepest reverence had long been bestowed, and was very happy as “the old man’s darling.” One child, a boy, had blessed this singular union. Mr. May and Emily did not surmise the deep destitution into which Sophie Churchill had fallen. The deep snow and severe cold had prevented them for several weeks from crossing the river to see her.