But a manner of speech denoting, if not wording, a recognition of his unswerving loyalty would have accorded better with the estimate I had otherwise formed of her character.

The absence of any tone or word that even one so devoted as I could construe to her advantage was puzzling in the extreme.
Still, feeling toward her as I did, I was compelled to excuse her as best I might by attributing her hardness to an evil system now happily abolished.

But the nerves in my lost arm seemed to tingle with a secret satisfaction when I thought of Clem's empty reward for his life-work and remembered that I had helped, though ever so little, to free him and his kind from a bond so unfortunate for each of the parties to it.
The winter deepened about us, chill and bleak and ravaging.

The smoke from our chimneys went up in tall columns that lost themselves in the gray sky.

The snow shut us in, and presently the wind lay in wait to blast us when we dared the drifts.
Yet Miss Caroline throve, despite her nostalgia.