When he reached the house, the good lady visitor, who had insisted that she could not stay later than evening, gave up all hope of getting home that night. She stayed a fortnight! For this time the storm raged without thawing, and for three nights and days the snow piled up over the windows, and almost covered the little pines, in drifts fifteen feet deep. Not a horse came by for two weeks. Once another man started in a storm on a similar errand; but in spite of his love, courage, and despair, he was overwhelmed, and sinking in agony in the drift, he never moved again. When the storm was over, the sun came out; and what a mockery it seemed! The squirrels ran nimbly up the trees, the blue jays called merrily; but the settlers looked over the white expanse, and missed the gray smoke that usually rose from the little log shanty. The men gathered to break the roads; the ox-team and snow-plough were brought out, and the dogs were wild with delight as they ploughed up the snow with their snouts, and barked for very joy; but the men were sorrowful, and worked as for life and death. Half way to the house the husband was found motionless as a statue, his blue eyes gazing up into the sky. The men redoubled their efforts, and gained the house. The stoutest heart quailed. A poor cat was mewing piteously in the window. And when at last the oldest man went in, he found mother and new-born child frozen to death. VII. SATURDAY AFTERNOON IN THE SOUTH. The South has two kinds of frontier,--that which has never been settled, and once thickly settled parts that have grown up to wild woods and wastes since the war. In old times the slave had a half-holiday on Saturday, which custom the colored brother still keeps up; and a more picturesque scene is not to be found than that presented by a town, say of three thousand inhabitants, where the county has seven colored people to one white. Never was such a motley company gathered in one place,--old men with grizzled heads, all with a rabbit-foot in their pocket, a necklace for a charm around their necks, their bronzed breasts open to view; old mammies with scarlet bandannas; young belles of all shades--here a mulatto girl in pale-blue dress and pointed shoes, her waist as disfigured as any Parisian's, there a mammoth, coal-black negro driving a pair of splendid mules. Here is an original turnout; it was once a sulky. The shafts stick out above the great ears of the mule; the seat has been replaced by an old rocking-chair; the wheels are wired-up pieces of a small barrel that have replaced some of the spokes, while fully half the harness is made up of rope, string, and wire. The owner's clothes are one mass of patchwork, and his hat is full of holes, out of which the unruly wool escapes and keeps his hat from blowing off.