A wild and desolate evening, making the pleasant little room, with its rosy fire, and carpet, and pretty furniture, tenfold pleasanter by contrast.

A bleak and terrible evening for all wayfarers--bitterly cold, and darkening fast.
The seamstress sat while the dismal daylight faded drearily out, her hands lying idly in her lap, her great, melancholy dark eyes fixed on the fast-falling snow.

The tokens of sickness and sorrow lingered more marked than ever in that wasted form and colourless face, and the ruddy glow of the fire-light flickered on her mourning dress.

Weary and lonely, she looked as the dying day.
Presently, above the shrieking of the stormy wind, came another sound--the loud jingling of sleigh-bells.

Dimly through the fluttering whiteness of the snow-storm she saw the sleighs whirl up to the door, and their occupants, in a tumult of laughter, hurrying rapidly into the house.