Motherly Mrs. Plympton! How her thoughts and her prayers went after her boy, like the wings of a mother bird, flying after and hovering over her young. And this winter morning she had not forgotten to put up the often ascending prayer for her boy’s better life. She stood at the window awhile, watching Kitty and her load, and then stepped back to her kitchen duties.
“Pretty hard going, father,” said the younger occupant of the sleigh.
“It will be better out in the main road, and we shall strike it soon. I wouldn’t start to–day, but this is the last chance for going to the life saving station as I promised, before you leave for school; and you leave day after to–morrow, and it is evident we must go to the station to–day, if we go at all. But I think it will be all right out in the main road.”
The late fall of snow had draped forest and field.
As our travelers proceeded on their journey, the drifts deepened, rather than lessened. It was toilsome traveling. By and by, they came to a road skirted with telegraph–poles. Here they were obliged to jump out and push the sleigh.
“Father, let us begin to count the telegraph–poles. That will help pass the time.”
“All right. One!” shouted Mr. Plympton, as they passed the first of the long line of tall, wooden travelers lining the highway, and stretching ahead into the dark, green forest.
“Two–o–o!” cried Walter, so glad when he could count off a single pole. They trudged through the snow, pushing the sleigh, pulling Kitty forward, calling out at intervals, “Three! Four! Five! Six! Seven! Eight!”
“I notice. I wonder what they are doing!”
Two men, a little distance ahead, ran out of the woods dragging a long piece of timber.
“I guess they’re going to fix the telegraph wire, Walter. The storm broke down some of the wires.”
The men dropped the long timber directly across the road and then darted into the woods again.
“That’s cool, Walter! What do they want to drop that in our path for?” The men were now back again, sticking forked branches in the snow; and they then laid the timber in the forks.
“Can’t we go through?” asked Mr. Plympton in a somewhat provoked tone.
“I wouldn’t advise you to, Cap’n,” replied one of the men who wore a red woolen jacket. “You see the snow up ’long, is piled higher than your horse’s back. We know, ’cause we’ve been breakin’ out the road; but the snow does blow in wuss than pizen, and we concluded to quit until the wind quits. Where you goin’, Cap’n?”