The snow went on increasing from hour to hour. By noon the wind
began to rise; before night it was blowing a furious gale. Furious
blasts clutched at the windows, and rattled them like castanets. The
wind howled and shrieked and moaned, till it seemed as if the air
were filled with angry demons fighting to possess the square white
house.

Many of the pupils of Miss Wayland's school came to the tea-table
with disturbed faces; but Massachusetts was as calm as usual, and
Maine was jubilant.

"Isn't it a glorious storm?" she cried, exultingly. "I didn't know
there could be such a storm in this part of the country, Miss Wayland.
Will you give me some milk, please?"

"There is no milk, my dear," said Miss Wayland, who looked rather
troubled. "The milkman has not come, and probably will not come
to-night. There has never been such a storm here in my lifetime!"
she added. "Do you have such storms at home, my dear?"

"Oh, yes, indeed!" Maine said, cheerfully. "I don't know that we
often have so much wind as this, but the snow is nothing out of the
way. Why, on Palm Sunday last year our milkman dug through a drift
twenty feet deep to get at his cows. He was the only milkman who
ventured out, and he took me and the minister's wife to church in
his little red pung.

"We were the only women in church, I remember. Miss Betsy Follansbee,
who had not missed going to church in fifteen years, started on foot,
after climbing out of her bedroom window to the shed roof and