CHAPTER XX. 



SARTOR INSECTORUM. 



Our next meeting fell upon a genuine winter evening. 

 Snow had fallen during the day, and although the moon 

 rose full, j'ct ever and anon sharp squalls drove clouds 

 along the sky, intercepting her rays, and dusting the 

 fast whitening earth with feathery falls of snow flakes. 

 Then the clouds scudded away, and the moonlight laid 

 its glory upon the landscape. Looking out from our 

 sitting-room window, we saw Luna's broad, jocund 

 face hanging over a neighboring woods, and peering 

 straight along the line of our wide avenue. In the 

 open spaces the light sparkled among the snow crystals, 

 which, as they drifted before puffs of wind, seemed like 

 a phosphorescence of the frost upon a sea of snow. 

 The lane and fields lay in a whiteness that was intense 

 under the full moonbeams ; shadows of the trees 

 stretching down toward us were deeper in tlie contrast, 

 and as the branches swayed before the gust, they- 

 shifted continually, so that their weird outlines looked 

 like a dance of giants sporting on a crystal floor, and 

 reaching forth their gaunt arms to catch the columns 

 of drift that whirled by like veiled spirits of the storm. 



Inside the old farm house a cheerful home scene Avas 



presented. Dan thoroughly understands the well nigh 

 400 



