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.
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