RUBY’S VISITOR. 99

presume they were made so on purpose to be bits of crimson
lights for her hair and eyes, which were as black as a sum-
mer’s night when the stars are hidden.

On this evening of which I started to tell you, she built up
her largest and brightest fire, —for it was a very cold even-
ing,—looked a few minutes at the towers crashing down
through the city, watched for the frescos, and the tapes-
tries, and the gold and ebony pavements to flicker and glow
into their places, — put upon her forehead her mother’s chain
of gold beads that was kept so carefully in the drawer, and
that served her for a princess’s crown; then she suddenly
remembered another of her playfellows who would be in the
room that night, and went to the window to look for it.
Perhaps you will think it must have been a stupid com-
panion, but I assure you that Ruby did not find it so. It
was only the moonlight which had fallen silently in, and lay
quite pale upon the floor.

The moon itself, looking very large and very lonely, was
bright above the tops of the pines, against the blue of a far,
faint sky. Every branch of every tree was tipped and edged
with silver; all the foliage of the evergreens, and the dead
leaves that had hung all winter shivering on their stems,
flashed in the light like crystals; the footpaths stretched
on through the woods, arched overhead and _ glittering,
winding away and away like interminable fairy corridors,
and the snow, like a mirror, caught all the pearly lights
with which the air was filled, and threw them back. Ruby