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268 areas of glass. At long intervals the dirty sails of a schooner crawled along the lifted skyline. The ragged granite of the mountains, sharp against an Italian blue of winter skies, bore white symbols, gigantic and undecipherable; their sides were burnt brown, charred bitterly, cut with long scars of snow; from their bases the bare hills, ridged with undulating spines of buried fences, and rearing now and then the Christmas spire of a lonely evergreen, sloped away to the glitter of the fields and the pink haze of lowland alders. Only the promontories ran their great nebs down into the sea, steadfast in stern verdure, scorning to change with seasons or with centuries.

For hours, for half-days, nothing stirred in the main street of the seaport, except a wraith of powdery snow. The ocean wind, on howling nights, had by the freaks of its own will heaped drifts against windows, or swept the frozen road bare to the fossil hoofprints from the age of summer. Rarely, and strangely as if down and out from the painted vista of a stage background, appeared a man trudging, a mittenful of snow held to his ear, and his