whitewashed, and so were the apple-trees round it. A gourd vine clung
to its chimney; pigeons fluttered upon its shingles, and June flung a
crimson rose mantle over its side and half-way up the roof.

One wished to stop and rest beneath its weeping willow by the
white stone milk house.

Those who passed by day were accustomed to a woman's face at the
window--a calm face which looked on life as evening looks on day--such
a face as one might use to decorate a fancy of the old frontier. Those
who passed by night were grateful for the lamp which protested against
Nature's apparent consecration of the place to solitude.

This home held aloof from "Cold Friday"; many times Curiosity went
in, but Conjecture alone came out, for through the years the man and
woman of this cabin merely said, "We came from back yonder." Nobody
knew where "yonder" was.

But the law of compensation was in force--even in "Cold Friday."
With acquaintanceships as with books, the ecstasy of cutting leaves
is not always sustained in the reading, and the silence of this man and
woman was the life of village wonder.

It gave "Friday's" chimney talk a spice it otherwise had never known;
the back log seldom crumbled into ashes till the bones of these cabin
dwellers lay bleaching on the plains of "Perhaps."

John Dale was seventy-five years or more, but worked his niggard hillside
all the day, and seldom came to town. His aged wife was kind; the
flowers of her life she gave away, but none could glance upon the garden.