Sleep came again somehow, and there were no more bad dreams to be remembered. In the morning Horace did not even recall very distinctly the episode of the nightmare, but he discovered some novel threads of gray at his temple as he brushed his hair, and for the first time in his life, too, he took a drink of spirits before breakfast. CHAPTER XXIV.--A VEHEMENT RESOLVE. The sloppy snow went away at last, and the reluctant frost was forced to follow, yet not before it had wreaked its spite by softening all the country roads into dismal swamps of mud, and heaving into painful confusion of holes and hummocks the pavements on Thessaly’s main streets. But in compensation the birds came back, and the crocus and hyacinth showed themselves, and buds warmed to life again along the tender silk-brown boughs and melted into the pale bright green of a springs new foliage. Overcoats disappeared, and bare-legged boys with poles and strings of fish dawned upon the vision. The air was laden with the perfume of lilacs and talk about baseball. From this to midsummer seemed but a step. The factory workmen walked more wearily up the hill in the heat to their noonday dinners; lager-beer kegs advanced all at once to be the chief staple of freight traffic at the railway dépôt. People who could afford to take travelling vacations began to make their plans or to fulfil them, and those who could not began musing pleasantly upon the charms of hop-picking in September. And then, lo! it was autumn, and young men added with pride another unit to the sum of their age, and their mothers and sisters secretly subtracted such groups or fractions of units as were needful, and felt no more compunction at thus hoodwinking Time than if he had been a customs-officer. The village of Thessaly, which like a horizon encompassed most of the individuals whom we know, could tell little more than this of the months that had passed since Thanksgiving Day, now once again the holiday closest at hand. The seasons of rest and open-air amusement lay behind it, and in front was a vista made of toil. There had been many deaths, and still more numerous births, and none in either class mattered much save under the roof-tree actually blessed or afflicted. The year had been fairly prosperous, and the legislature had passed the bill which at New Year’s would enable the village to call itself a city. Of the people with whom this story is concerned, there is scarcely more to record during this lapse of time.