The Battle Ground

art as if a lamp were burning there, shut in from the night. Above the wind and the groaning of

in' no oats dis side er home, en dar ain' no co'n, nurr.

lieved, fine and straight, against the frosted glass. "Are you asleep,

way. "Why, who can sleep on Christmas Eve? there's too much to do, isn't there, mamma? Twenty

ow and do them," suggested Vir

dear," insisted Mrs. Ambler. "

tty, sternly. "Papa and I shall make Christma

myself," returned the Governor; "I wasn't b

"'Tain' no use a-mincin', gemmun. Dar

n her breast, but the sound aroused her, and

dropped off," she said. "Ar

's so thick I can't see;" he opened the window an

"I'ud a knowd 'em ef dey'd come a-struttin' down de road-dey cyarn fool me

in his head, and Miss Lydia slept again until the carri

h delight. "Ef'n de snow had er kep' you, dar 'ouldn'

t home. There, Julia, you go to bed, and leave Betty and myself to manage things. Don't say I can't do it. I tell you I've been Governor of Virginia, and I'll not be daun

take the world in her arms and hold it to her bosom. "Dearest, sweetest," she said, and her voice was full and tremulous, though still with its crisp brightness of tone. It was as if she caressed with her whole being, with those hidden possibilities of pa

y found Mammy Riah, await

he gave her mother over to the old negress, and ran down again to the dinin

n out all these things, dau

ssurance. "You just sit down at the table and put the nuts into t

thanks that we are not as the beasts that have four legs," he remarked t

ere's only one stoc

oubled," suggested the Governor. "You can't convinc

g after the work was over, she lingered a moment in the path to the house, looking far across the white country. The snow had ceased, and a single star was shining, through a rift in the scudding clouds, straight overhead. From the

blowing out the candle upon the bureau, she undressed by the firelight, crooning gently as she did so in a voice that was lower than the singing flames. With the glow o

er earliest memory was of a May morning when they took her out into a field of buttercups, and told her that she might pluck her arms full if she could, and then, as she stretched out her little hands and began to gather very fast, she looked across to where the waving yellow buttercups stood up against the blue spring sky. That memory had always been her own before; but now, when she went

ropped his toy; and it was for that she was crying, not for her own poor doll. Yes, all her life she had had two griefs to weep for, and two joys to be glad over. She had been really a dou

on the trees and the air is keen with the smell of the newly turned earth. She felt that it was time for the spring to come again; she wanted to walk alone in the woods and to watch the swallows flying from

another. It seemed to her that she found new meanings now in things that she had once overlooked. She read words in his eyes which he had never spoken; and, one by one,

ike the prince in the fairy tale, at the perilous moment. She saw herself on the breast of a great river, borne, while she stretched her hands at a white rose-bush blooming in the clouds, to a cataract which she could not see, though she heard its

y, rising on her elbow and rubbin

cry, and stood up

ot yet," s

oing? Aren't yo

hair into a rope; "yes, I'm coming now," and she cros

ep by the fire," she s