CHAPTER IX. 



A TWO DAYS BREAK, 



HE frost of the week ending December 8th rudely 

 interrupted a routine just established — a day-to-day life 

 thoroughly entered upon — a habit of being and doing to 

 which body and mind had become fairly set. The dis- 

 ruption, for which we might well have been prepared and 

 were not, put the machinery of existence all out of joint 

 — giving us a shock as if we had never thought or heard 

 of frost, and as if the four months' future had been 

 bought on the conditions of open weather and uninter- 



