the winter one long imprisonment in the dark. But to a joyous, brisk,
sanguine soul, the clear, crisp, cold air is like wine; and the whiteness
and sparkle and shine of the snow are like martial music, a constant
excitement and spell.

Mercy's soul thrilled within her with new delight and impulse each day.
The winter had always oppressed her before. On the seashore, winter means
raw cold, a pale, gray, angry ocean, fierce winds, and scanty wet snows.
This brilliant, frosty air, so still and dry that it never seemed cold,
this luxuriance of snow piled soft and high as if it meant shelter and
warmth,--as indeed it does,--were very wonderful to Mercy. She would have
liked to be out of doors all day long: it seemed to her a fairer than
summer-time. She followed the partially broken trails of the wood-cutters
far into the depths of the forests, and found there on sunny days, in
sheltered spots, where the feet of the men and horses and the runners of
the heavy sledges had worn away the snow, green mosses and glossy ferns
and shining clumps of the hepatica. It was a startling sight on a December
day, when the snow was lying many inches deep, to come suddenly on Mercy
walking in the middle of the road, her hands filled with green ferns and
mosses and vines. There were three different species of ground-pine in
these woods, and hepatica and pyrola and wintergreen, and thickets of
laurel. What wealth for a lover of wild, out-door things! Each day Mercy
bore home new treasures, until the house was almost as green and fragrant
as a summer wood. Day after day, Mrs. White, from her point of observation
at her window, watched the lithe young figure coming down the road,
bearing her sheaves of boughs and vines, sometimes on her shoulder, as
lightly and gracefully as a peasant girl of Italy might bear her poised
basket of grapes. Gradually a deep wonder took possession of the lonely
old woman's soul.