celestial timepiece, and the starry heaven was but a leaky ceiling in their earthly habitation, there was here and there an eye keen to note the play of light and shade and color, the glint of wave and the sparkle of hoar-frost and the spume of tossing seas; the gracious fairness of cloud and bird and blossom, the magic of sunlit sails in the offing, the witchery of white winters, and all the changing wonder of the woods; a soul with scanty self-consciousness at best, yet haply absorbing Nature, to give it back one day as Art.

Ah, but to see the world with other eyes than oneâs fellows, yet express the vision of oneâs race, its subconscious sense of beauty, is not all a covetable dower.

The islands of Acadia are riddled with pits, where men have burrowed for Captain Kiddâs Treasure and found nothing but holes. The deeper they delved the deeper holes they found. Whoso with blood and tears would dig Art out of his soul may lavish his golden prime in pursuit of emptiness, or, striking treasure, find only fairy gold, so that when his eye is purged of the spell of morning, he sees his hand is full of withered leaves.

Book I—CHAPTER I

SOLITUDE

âMatt, Matt, whatâs thet thar noise?â

Matt opened his eyes vaguely, shaking off his younger brotherâs frantic clutch.

âItâs onây the frost,â he murmured, closing his eyes again. âGo to sleep, Billy.â

Since the sled accident that had crippled him for life, Billy was full of nervous terrors, and the night had been charged with mysterious noises. Within the lonely wooden house weather-boards and beams cracked; without, twigs snapped and branches crashed; at times Billy heard reports as loud as pistol-shots. One of these shots meant the bursting of the wash-basin on the bedroom bench, Matt having forgotten to empty its contents, which had expanded into ice.

Matt curled himself up more comfortably and almost covered his face with the blanket, for the cold in the stoveless attic was acute. In the gray half-light the rough beams and the quilts glistened with frozen breaths. The little square window-panes were thickly frosted, and below the crumbling rime was a thin layer of ice left from the day before, solid up to the sashes, and leaving no infinitesimal dot of clear glass, for there was nothing to thaw it except such heat as might radiate through the bricks of the square chimney that came all the way from the cellar through the centre of the flooring to pop its head through the shingled roof.

âMatt!â Billy was nudging his brother in the ribs again.

âHullo!â grumbled the boy.

âThet thar ainât the frost. Hark!â

â âTis, I tell ye. Donât you hear the pop, pop, pop?â

âNot thet; tâother down-stairs.â

âOh, thetâs the wind, I reckon.â

âNo; itâs some âun screaminâ!â

Matt raised himself on his elbow, and listened.

âWhy, you gooney, itâs onây mother rowinâ Harriet,â he said, reassuringly, and snuggled up again between the blankets.

The winter, though yet young, had already achieved a reputation. Blustrous north winds had driven inland, felling the trees like lumbermen. In the Annapolis Basin myriads of herrings, surprised by Jack Frost before their migratory instinct awoke, had been found frozen in the weirs, and the great salt tides overflowing the high dykes had been congealed into a chocolate sea that, when the liquid water beneath ran back through the sluices, lay solid on the marshes. By the shores of the Basin of Minas sea-birds flapped ghostlike over amber ice-cakes, whose mud-streaks under the kiss of the sun blushed like dragonâs blood.

Snow had fallen heavily, whitening the âevergreenâ hemlocks, and through the shapeless landscape half-buried oxen had toiled to clear the blurred roads bordered by snow-drifts, till the three familiar tracks of hoofs and sleigh-runners came in sight again. The stage to Truro ploughed its way along, with only dead freight on its roof and a furred animal or two, vaguely human, shivering inside. Sometimes the mail had to travel by horse, and sometimes it altogether disappointed Billy and his brothers and sisters of the excitement of its passage; for the stage road ran by the small clearing, in the centre of which their house and barn had been built—a primitive gabled house, like a Noahâs ark, ugliness unadorned, and a cheap log barn of the âlean-toâ type, with its cracks corked with moss, and a roof of slabs.

Jack Frost might stop the mail, but he could not stop the gayeties of the season. âWooden frolicsâ and quilting-parties and candy-pullings and infares and Baptist revival-meetings had been as frequent as ever; and part of Mattâs enjoyment of his couch was a delicious sense of oversleeping himself legitimately, for even his mother could hardly expect him to build the fire at five when he had only returned from Deacon Haileyâs âmuddinâ frolicâ at two. He saw himself coasting down the white slopes in his hand-sled, watching the wavering radiance of the northern lights that paled the moon and the stars, and wishing his mother would not spoil the after-glow of the nightâs pleasure and the poetic silence of the woods by grumbling about his grown-up sister Harriet, who had deserted them for an earlier escort home. He felt himself well rewarded for his afternoonâs labor in loading marsh mud for the top-dressing of Deacon Haileyâs fields; and a sudden remembrance of how his mother had been rewarded for helping Mrs. Hailey to prepare the feast made him nudge Billy in his turn.

âCheer up, Billy. Weâve brought back a basket oâ goodies: thereâs plum-cake, doughnuts—â

âItâs gettinâ worst,â said Billy. âHark!â

Matt mumbled impatiently and redirected his thoughts to the âmuddinâ frolic.â The images of the night swept before him with almost the vividness of actuality; he lost himself in memories as though they were realities, and every now and then a dash of sleep streaked these waking visions with the fantasy of dream.

âMy, how the fiddle shrieks!â runs the boyâs reminiscence. âWhy donât ole Jupe do his tuninâ to home, the pesky nigger? Weâre all waitinâ for the reel—the âfoursâ are all made up; Ruth Hailey and me hev took the floor. Ruth looks jest great with thet white frock anâ the pink sash, thetâs a fact. Hooray!—âThe Devil among the Tailors!â—La, lalla, lalla, lalla, lalla, flip-flop!â He hears the big winter top-boots thwack the threshing-floor. Keep it up! Whoop! Faster! Ever faster! Oh, the joy of life!

Now he is swinging Ruth in his arms. Oh, the merry-go-round! The long rows of candles pinned by forks to the barn walls are guttering in the wind of the movement; the horses tied to their mangers neigh in excitement; from between their stanchions the mild-eyed cows gaze at the dancers, perking their naïve noses and tranquilly chewing the cud. A bat, thawed out of his winter nap by the heat of the temporary stove, flutters drowsily about the candles; and the odors of the stable and of the packed hay mingle with the scents of the ball-room. Mattâs exhaustive eye, though never long off pretty Ruthâs face, takes in even the grains of wheat that gild many a tousled head of swain or lass as the shaking of the beams dislodges the unthreshed kernels in the mow under the eaves, and, keener even than the eye of his collie, Sprat, notes the mice that dart from their holes to seize the fallen drops of tallow. But perhaps Sprat is only lazy, for he will not vacate his uncomfortable snuggery under the stove, though he has to shift his carcass incessantly to escape the jets of tobacco-juice constantly squirted in his direction. It serves him right, thinks his young master, for persisting in coming, though, for the matter of that, the creature, having superintended the mud-hauling, has more right to be present than