There had, indeed, been one other, but for him there hung no loving memorial. He was the youngest of all, and such a noble, strong, and lusty infant, that the father, in the pride of his heart, and with his fondness for Scriptural names, had christened him Samson. He, too, had gone; but in the dread gallery that hung about the room there was no framed funereal picture "To the Memory of Samson Newell." If in the tomb of his father's or mother's heart he lay buried, no outward token gave note thereof.
So the old couple sat alone before the sitting-room fire. It was not often used, this room,--scarcely ever now, except upon Sunday, or on those two grave holidays that the Newells kept,--Thanksgiving- and Fast-Day. This was Thanksgiving-Day. The snow without was falling thick and fast. It came in great eddies and white whirls, obscuring the prospect from the windows and scudding madly around the corners. It lay in great drifts against the fences, and one large pile before the middle front-window had gathered volume till it reached half up the second row of panes; for it had snowed all night and half the day before. The roads were so blocked by it that they would have been rendered impassable but for the sturdy efforts of the farmers' boys, who drove teams of four and five yokes of oxen through the drifts with heavily laden sleds, breaking out the ways. The sidewalks in the little village were shovelled and swept clean as fast as the snow fell; for, though all business was suspended, according to the suggestion in the Governor's proclamation, and in conformity to old usage, still they liked to keep the paths open on Thanksgiving-Day,--the paths and the roads; for nearly half the families in the place expected sons and daughters from far away to arrive on the train which should have been at the railroad-station on the previous evening, but had been kept back by the snow.
But Jacob and Ruth Newell had neither son nor daughter, grandchild, cousin, relation of any nearness or remoteness, to expect; for the white snow covered with a cold mantle scores of mounds in many graveyards where lay their dead. And they sat this day and thought of all their kindred who had perished untimely,--all save one.
