He looked
around searchingly; her figure was nowhere in sight.
He stood--waiting.
The valley had memories, what memories! The years came close together
here; they clustered as thickly as the trees themselves. Vacant spots
among them marked where the Christmas Trees of former years had been
cut down. Some of the Trees had been for the two children they had
lost. This wandering trail led hither and thither back to the first
Tree for the first child: he had stooped down and cut that close to
the ground with his mere penknife. When it had been lighted, it had
held only two or three candles; and the candle on the top of it had
flared level into the infant's hand-shaded eyes.
He knew that she was making through the evergreens a Pilgrimage of the
Years, walking there softly and alone with the feet of life's Pities
and a mother's Constancies.
He waited for her--motionless.
The stillness of the twilight rested on the valley now. Only from the
trees came the plaintive twittering of birds which had come in from
frozen weeds and fence-rows and at the thresholds of the boughs were
calling to one another. It was not their song, but their speech; there
was no love in it, but there was what for them perhaps corresponds to
our sense of ties.
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