The Wolf-Slayer: Margaret Kaurner

Book excerpt: IT WAS winter time; cold, bleak, sharp, piercing winds were blowing, scattering the snowflakes as they fell, and making doubly precious the cozy warmth and snug comfort of the fire-side. Through the windows of a pleasant country house, the red glow of fire-light was streaming, and fell in ruddy beauty on the snow-white ground, and while the wind kept howling and sweeping through the forest glades with melancholy music, the sound of pleasant voices and the shout of merry laughter betokened happiness within the house. Happiness, ay, that there was, and plenty of it, and as the circle gathered round the blazing logs, one might have gone a long, long way to find a sight more cheerful, and without succeeding. There was the old grandfather with his silver locks, and the good grandame, with that high cap of hers which was a perfect marvel to behold, and her gold spectacles resting on her nose. There were the younger couple, a tall, stout, well-built man, with black curly hair, and about six and thirty years of age, and his wife, with a charmingly pretty face, and about three or four years younger, and a group of lighthearted children, some sitting on the ground before the fire, while two or three were climbing upon grandpa's knee and begging him, with all the winsome lovingness of children, to tell them a story. "And what is there I can tell you, Annie dear," said the old man to a pretty dark-eyed girl who was looking up into his face, "that you have not heard a dozen times before?" "O we like them all the better, grandpa, because we know them," said the children, "then we can pick and choose, you understand."