CHAPTER XI.
THE STORM.
The winter since Christmas had been unusually severe, and the oldest inhabitant, of whom there are always many in every town, pronounced the days as they came and went the coldest they had ever known.

Ten, twelve, and even fourteen degrees below zero the thermometers marked more than once, while old Peterkin's, which was hung inside the Lizy Ann and always took the lead, went down one morning to seventeen, and all the water-pipes and pumps in town either froze or burst, and Arthur Tracy, who, with his absorption of self, never forgot the poor, sent tons and tons of coal to them, and whispered to himself: 'Poor Gretchen! It is hard for her if she is on the sea in such weather as this.

Heaven protect her, poor little Gretchen!' That night when Frank went, as his custom was, to sit a few moments with his brother, he found him on his knees, with his face toward the picture, repeating the prayer for those upon the sea.
The next day there was a change for the better, and the next, and the next, until when the last day of February dawned Peterkin's thermometer registered only two, and people began to show themselves in the streets, while the sun tried to break through the grey clouds which shrouded the wintry sky.

But this was only temporary, for before noon the mercury fell again to eight below, the wind began to rise, and when the New York train came panting to the station at half-past six, clouds of snow so dense and dark were driving over the hills and along the line of track that nothing could be distinctly seen.
It was not until the train had moved on that the station-master, who, half blinded with the sleet, was gathering up the mail-bag, which had been unceremoniously dropped, saw across the track at a little distance from him the figure of a woman who seemed to be trying to examine a paper she held in her hand, while clinging to her skirts and crying piteously was a little child, but whether boy or girl, he could not tell.
'Can I do anything for you ?' he said advancing toward the stranger, who, thrusting the paper from sight, caught up the child in her arms, and without word of answer, hurried away in the storm and rapidly-increasing darkness.
'Curis! She must have got off t'other side of the cars.

I wonder who she is and where she is goin'.