THE OLD COUNTRY HOUSE. HERE it is, my child,” said father. I think that his words fell into a little half-doze into which I had dropped, for we had ridden at least twenty miles since we left the cars, at the little brown depot by the side of the river. So, as it drew toward night, I was tired betwixt the car and the carriage ride, and a drowsy mist began stealing over me, as the mists did over the great mountains on the right, when my father’s words eee me back suddenly into a keen, strong life. I sat up straight, of a sudden, and looked out. My heart beat so fast. I saw the blue vapor of the smoke as it rose slowly up through the bare trees, and a moment later we dashed over the little brook-bridge, and the house came in sight—the gray house with the gambrel-roof that: I had never seen, but that I had heard of so long and often that it seemed familiar as our own. A great house, wide and low, a little back from the street, with the bare trees all around it, and the roof and ground white with snow. This old country-house, this old gray, gambrel-roofed farm- house, was the one where my father had been born, and I was coming home to it now in my ninth year, because almost the saddest thing which can happen in this world to a little child had come suddenly to me: my mother was dead—my mother, with her pale, sweet face, and the soft, brown hair that shaded it; my mother, with the tender smile upon her lips, and the love in her deep blue eyes; my mother, whose sweet, tender voice seemed still to call to me softly, though I knew how dark and cold and silent was the grave where she lay! So my father had brought me home to the old house here he was born, and to the old grandmother there, whose heart he knew held for me now the warmest place this side of heaven. 224