When Gabriella had begun teaching, she passed daily out of the yard
into an apple orchard and thence across a large woodland pasture,
in the remote corner of which the schoolhouse was situated. Through
this woods the children had made their path: the straight
instinctive path of childhood. But Gabriella, leaving this at the
woods-gate, had begun to make one for herself. She followed her
will from day to day; now led in this direction by some better
vista; now drawn aside toward a group of finer trees; or seeing,
farther on, some little nooklike place. In time, she had out of
short disjointed threads sown a continuous path; it was made up of
her loves, and she loved it. Of mornings a brisk walk along this
braced her mind for the day; in the evening it quieted jangled
nerves and revived a worn-out spirit: shedding her toil at the
schoolhouse door as a heavy suffocating garment, she stepped
gratefully out into its largeness, its woodland odors, and twilight
peace.

On the night of the sleet tons of timber altogether had descended
across this by-way. When the snow fell the next night, it brought
down more. But the snow melted, leaving the ice; the ice melted,
leaving the dripping boughs and bark. In time these were warmed and
dried by sun and wind. New edges of greenness appeared running
along the path. The tree-tops above were tossing and roaring in the
wild gales of March, Under loose autumn leaves the earliest violets
were dim with blue. But Gabriella had never once been there to
realize how her path had been ruined, or to note the birth of
spring.

It was perhaps a month afterward that one morning at the usual