The sky is gray with unfallen sleet; the wind howls bitterly about the
house; relentless in its desperate speed, it whirls by green crosses
from the fir-boughs in the wood,--dry russet oak-leaves,--tiny cones
from the larch, that were once rose-red with the blood of Spring, but
now rattle on the leafless branches, black and bare as they. No leaf
remains on any bough of the forest, no scarlet streamer of brier flaunts
from the steadfast rocks that underlie all verdure, and now stand out,
bleak and barren, the truths and foundations of life, when its ornate
glories are fled away. The river flows past, a languid stream of lead;
a single crow, screaming for its mate, flaps heavily against the
north-east gale, that enters here also and lifts the carpet in
long waves across the floor, whiffles light eddies of ashes in the
chimney-corner, and vainly presses on door and window, like a houseless
spirit shrieking and pining for a shelter from its bodiless and helpless
unrest in the elements.

The whole air,--although, within, my fire crackles and leaps with
steady cheer, and the red rose on my window is warm and sanguine with
bloom,--yet this whole air is full of tiny sparks of chill to my
sensitive and morbid nature; it is at once electric and cold, the very
atmosphere of spirits.--What a shadow passed that pane! Roger, was it
you?--The storm bursts, in one fierce rush of sleet and roaring wind;
the little spaniel crouched at my feet whimpers and nestles closer; the
house is silent,--silent as my thoughts,--silent as he is who walked
these rooms once, with a face likest to the sky that darkens them
now, and lonelier, lonelier than I, though at his side forever trod a
companion.

This valley of the Moosic is narrow and thinly settled. Here and