Page:Tales Round a Winter Hearth.djvu/17



was at the domestic tea-table of a quiet family, far in the country, they were told. A few friends had met there: and a sudden snow-storm beating up against the closed shutters of the parlour windows, where the social little group were assembled, seemed by its heavy continuance to give notice that the moon, at least, must rise, to track the several guests over the fastly shrouding moorland, ere they could venture to issue forth, and separate for their different homes. On this conviction, the comfortably seated inmates drew nearer the well-piled hearth, with countenances rather smiling than appalled at their threatened captivity; and one or other of them falling successively into little anecdotes of similar watchings, the discourse at last took the turn of passing away the remainder of the prolonged evening in the relation of various stories of a more general nature, founded on facts, or traditionally known to the parties who told them. Among the latter, the following are recollected by two of the auditors; and thus they repeat them, for a similar hour of amusement, in any similar world-excluded winter night.