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 alike of the same unpainted wood, pale-brown, and clean, and faintly shining. Here and there, through some open doorway, the sunlight shot a slant of gold, and splashed a golden pool upon the floor, but all the rest was shadowy and dim, and neutral-tinted. Millicent walked the length of the passage, opened the door at the end, stepped out upon the broad verandah, then. . . . “Ah-h-h!” she caught her breath.

There had been a frost in the night. That was the reason why the curtain had not fluttered—there was no wind. The air was still keen, and of a faultless clearness, but the early sun had now melted the rime, and everything was sparkling. On the little lawn in front of the verandah, the thick-strung dewdrops flashed like diamonds; here and there, one that had caught the light at an angle swung to and fro from some slender grass blade a fairy lamp of glow-worm green, of fire-colour, or blue. Down in the little orchard beyond the lawn, the still-ungathered quinces hung like golden moons in a green night, and a rosy globe or two smiled out through the fast-thinning leaves of the apple-boughs. It was none of these several brightnesses, however, that had so captured Millicent’s first look—no! but, out there—beyond the lawn and the orchard, past the aspiring, leafless poplars, and dark mass of macrocarpas that framed between them a glimpse of curved white road. . . out, and above, and beyond—the mountains, the mountains, they were there! The new sunshine fell full upon them, and bright with that, and with the first new snow, up they stood, one glorious great white wall! their summits cleanly cutting the clean blue of the sky,