His face flushed. “Wa'al, sir! the insurance o' that thar woman!” he exclaimed. “I war 'quainted with her; I war mighty well 'quainted with her.” He had a casual remembrance of those days when “he tuk ter the woods ter wear out his grief.” “She never gin me no promise, but me an' her war courtin' some. Sech dependence ez I put on her war mightily wasted. I dunno what ails the critter ter 'low ez I set store by her word.” Poor Eugenia! There is nothing so dead as ashes. His flame had clean burned out. So far afield were all his thoughts that he stood amazed when his wife, with a sudden burst of tears, declared passionately that she knew it--she saw it--she favored Eugenia Gryce. She had found out that he had married her because she looked like another woman. “'Genie Gryce hev got powerful little ter do ter kem a-jouncin' through the snow over hyar ter try ter set ye an' me agin one another,” he exclaimed, angrily. “Stealin' the filly ain't enough ter sati'fy her!” His wife was in some sort mollified. She sought to reassure herself. “Air we-uns of a favor?” “I dunno,” he replied, sulkily. “I 'ain't seen the critter fur nigh on ter ten year. I hev furgot the looks of her. 'Pears like ter me,” he went on, ruminating, “ez 'twar in my mind when I fust seen ye ez thar war a favor 'twixt ye. But I misdoubts now. Do she 'low ez I hev hed nuthin ter study 'bout sence?” Perhaps Eugenia is not the only woman who overrates the strength of a sentimental attachment. A gloomy intuition of failure kept her company all the lengthening way home. The chill splendors of the wintry day grated upon her dreary mood. How should she care for the depth and richness of the blue deepening toward the zenith in those vast skies? What was it to her that the dead vines, climbing the grim rugged crags, were laden with tufts and corollated shapes wherever these fantasies of flowers might cling, or that the snow flashed with crystalline scintillations? She only knew that they glimmered and dazzled upon the tears in her eyes, and she was moved to shed them afresh. She did not wonder whether her venture had resulted amiss. She only wondered that she had tried aught. And she was humbled. When she reached Lonesome Cove she found the piggin where she had hid it, and milked the cow in haste. It was no great task, for the animal was going dry. “Their'n gins a gallon a milkin',” she said, in rueful comparison. As she came up the slope with the piggin on her head, her husband was looking down from the porch with a lowering brow. “Why n't ye spen' the day a-milkin' the cow?” he drawled. “Dawdlin' yander in the cow-pen till this time in the mornin'! An' ter-morrer's Chrismus!”