XXIVSnow fell softly all the winter day. The world was an inverted paper weight, the snow filled the round atmosphere, it was the atmosphere itself, shredded into these cool white patterns. Layer on layer piled on the tree limbs, extended like arms for garments, so that the trees were dressed and shapely. The roofs of houses and barns and sheds were inches deep in eiderdown. In late afternoon Ase heard the sleigh bells ringing, the clatter of horse hoofs, bringing the children home from school.
Ordinarily the three of school age, Nat and Arent and ’Melie, walked the two miles each way to the one-room Linden schoolhouse, but in times of heavy snowfall he sent them off in the cutter, now that Nat was old enough to drive. He himself had never had the use of a rig for school, and he remembere
