summer--a varied surface, well planted with forest and ornamental trees,
intersected by a winding stream. The little river was full now, and ice
had formed on it, with small openings here and there, where the dark
water, hurrying along as if in fear of arrest, had a more chilling aspect
than the icy cover. The ground was white with snow, and all the trees
were bare except for a few frozen oak-leaves here and there, which
shivered in the wind and somehow added to the desolation. Leaden clouds
covered the sky, and only in the west was there a gleam of the departing
winter day.

Upon the elevated bank of the stream, opposite to the road by which they
approached, they saw a group of people--perhaps twenty-drawn closely
together, either in the sympathy of segregation from an unfeeling world,
or for protection from the keen wind. On the hither bank, and leaning on
the rails of the drive, had collected a motley crowd of spectators, men,
women, and boys, who exhibited some impatience and much curiosity,
decorous for the most part, but emphasized by occasional jocose remarks
in an undertone. A serious ceremony was evidently in progress. The
separate group had not a prosperous air. The women were thinly clad for
such a day. Conspicuous in the little assembly was a tall, elderly man in
a shabby long coat and a broad felt hat, from under which his white hair
fell upon his shoulders. He might be a prophet in Israel come out to
testify to an unbelieving world, and the little group around him, shaken
like reeds in the wind, had the appearance of martyrs to a cause. The
light of another world shone in their thin, patient faces. Come, they
seemed to say to the worldlings on the opposite bank--come and see what
happiness it is to serve the Lord. As they waited, a faint tune was
started, a quavering hymn, whose feeble notes the wind blew away of
first, but which grew stronger.