This was while she was still Amelia Titcomb,
innocent that there lived a man in the world who could set his foot
upon her maiden state, and flourish there. She was an impatient
creature. She never could delay for a fostering time to put her plants
into the ground, and her fall cleaning was done long before the flies
were gone. So, to-day, while other house mistresses sat cosily by the
fire, awaiting a milder season, she was toiling up and down the ladder
set in the cistern, dipping pails of sediment from the bottom, and,
hardy as she was, almost repenting her of a too-fierce desire. Her
thick brown hair was roughened and blown about her face, her cheeks
bloomed out in a frosty pink, and the plaid kerchief, tied in a hard
knot under her chin, seemed foolishly ineffectual against the cold. Her
hands ached, holding the pail, and she rebelled inwardly against the
inclemency of the time. It never occurred to her that she could have
put off this exacting job. She would sooner have expected Heaven to put
off the weather. Just as she reached the top of the cistern, and lifted
her pail of refuse over the edge, a man appeared from the other side of
the house, and stood confronting her. He was tall and gaunt, and his
deeply graven face was framed by grizzled hair.
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