and to this our conductor turned, saying to us:  “Go on to the house.”  This we did, and were met at the open door by a middle-aged woman, shading with one hand the candle held in the other.  This threw a strong light on her face, which instantly reminded me of an eagle.  She wore a double-bordered white cap over her black hair, and looked suspiciously at us through her small keen, black eyes, but kindly bade us come in to a low wainscoted hall, with broad stairway and many open doors.  Through one of these and a second door we saw a great fire of logs, and I should have liked to sit by it, but she led us into a square wainscoted room on the opposite side, in which blazed a coal fire almost as large as the log heap in the kitchen.

She gave us seats, and a white-haired man who sat in the corner, spoke to us, and made me feel comfortable.  Up to this time all the surroundings had had an air of enchanted castles, brigands, ghosts, witches.  The alert woman with the eagle face, in spite of her kindness, made me feel myself an object of doubtful character, but this old man set me quite at ease.  We were no more than well warmed when the wagon drove to the door, and the boy-man with the lantern appeared, saying,

“Come on.”

We followed him again, and he lifted us into the wagon, while the mistress of the house stood on the large flag-stone door-step, shading her candle-flame, and giving directions about our wraps.

“Coming events cast their shadows before,” when they are between us and the light; but that night the light must have been between them and me; for I bade good-bye to our hostess without any premonition we should ever again meet, or that I should sit alone, as I do to-night, over half a century later, in that same old wainscoted room, listening to the roar of those same angry waters and the rush of the wind wrestling with the groaning trees, in the dense darkness of this low valley.

When we had been carefully bestowed in the wagon, our deliverer took up his lantern, saying to Father Olever: 

“Drive on.”

He was obeyed, and led the way over a bridge across another noisy stream, and along a road where there was the sound of a waterfall very near, then up a steep, rocky way until he stopped, saying,

“I guess you can get along now.”

To Father Olever’s thanks he only replied by a low, contemptuous but good-humored laugh, as he turned to retrace his steps.  All comfort and strength and hope seemed to go with him.  We were abandoned to our fate, babes in the woods again, with only God for our reliance.  But after a while we could see the horizon, and arrived at our destination several minutes before midnight, to find the great mansion full of glancing lights and busy, expectant life.