"Once," said David reverently to himself, beholding it all, "once I should have seen in this storm some direct intention of the Creator toward man, even toward me. It would have been a reminder of His power; perhaps been a chastisement for some good end which I must believe in, but could not discover. Men certainly once interpreted storms as communications from the Almighty, as they did pestilence and famine. There still may be in this neighborhood people who will derive some such lesson from this. My father may in his heart believe it a judgment sent on us and on our neighbors for my impiety. Have not cities been afflicted on account of the presence of one sinner? Thankful I am not to think in this way now of physical law--not so to misconceive man's place in Nature. I know that this sleet, so important to us, is but one small incident in the long history of the planet's atmosphere and changing surface. It is the action of natural laws, operating without regard to man, though man himself may have had a share in producing it. It will bring death to many a creature; indirectly, it may bring death to me; but that would be among the results, not in the intention." He set his face to cross the wood--sliding, skating, steadying himself against the trunks, driving his heels through the ice crust The exercise was heating; his breath rose as a steam before his face. Beyond the woods he crossed a field; then a forest of many acres and magnificent timber, on the far edge of which, under the forest trees and fronting a country lane, stood the schoolhouse of the district. David looked anxiously, as he drew near, for any signs of injury that the storm might have done. One enormous tree-top had fallen on the fence. A limb had dropped sheer on the steps. The entire yard was little better than a brush heap. He soon turned away home relieved: he would be able to tell Gabriella to-night that none of the windows had been broken nor the roof; only a new woods scholar, with little feet and a big hard head and a bunch of mistletoe in one hand, was standing on the steps, waiting for her to open the door. David's college experience had effected the first great change in him as he passed from youth to manhood; Gabriella had wrought the second. The former was a fragment of the drama of man's soul with God; the latter was the drama of his heart with woman. It had begun the day the former ended--in the gloom of that winter twilight day, when he had quit the college after his final interview with the faculty, and had wandered forlorn and dazed into the happy town, just commencing to celebrate its season of peace on earth and good will to man. He had found her given up heart and soul to the work of decorating the church of her faith, the church of her fathers.