Down the Snow Stairs. Alice Abigail Corkran

were naughty. I should not love you if I did not say you were naughty,” the sweet voice continued, talking in Kitty’s ear. She sometimes lost what it said, but she heard the sound like a lullaby.

      “Punishment always follows naughtiness. It comes like the shadow that follows you in the sunshine. It may not be in pain to your body that it will come. It may come in grief for seeing another suffer for your fault; but punishment must follow wrong-doing.”

      Then again the tender voice spoke:

      “Your little heart tempted you to wake Johnnie. You ought to have resisted, to have said ‘No; what will comfort me may make Johnnie suffer.’” Then again the voice said: “We must resist temptation ... to win a blessing.”

      CHAPTER III

       DOWN THE SNOW STAIRS.

       Table of Contents

      “Get up! get up! get up!” said another voice.

      Kitty was wide awake and sitting up in a moment. Some one was standing by her bedside. Was it nurse? Her white cap and apron glimmered through the dusk.

      “How is Johnnie?” cried Kitty, starting up.

      It was not nurse; it was the snow-man staring at her with his blank eyes, and waving a great fingerless white hand to her in the moonlight.

      Kitty did not feel frightened; she sat up and looked at him. He held his pipe in one hand; with the other he beckoned to her. She could see the formless hand quite distinctly waving backward and forward.

      “Get up! get up! get up!” he repeated in a hoarse, muffled voice.

      “Go away, naughty snow-man,” said Kitty; “it is your fault that Johnnie is ill.”

      “Don’t you want to find the blue rose?” said the snow-man, with little pants between his words; he seemed very short of breath. His voice began with a rumble and a grumble, and ended in a squeak.

      “The blue rose that will cure Johnnie! Oh! but where can I find it?” eagerly cried Kitty, standing up in bed, and pressing up both hands under her chin.

      “Come away! come away! come away!” said the snow-man, moving off.

      He had an extraordinary way of walking—a shuffling, shambling, sliding way, and as he moved he still waved that white formless hand, and gazed at Kitty with his blank eyeless sockets.

      “I dare not go downstairs again,” said Kitty.

      But the snow-man was gliding, shambling, shuffling toward the window. He opened it, passed out, put his head back into the room, and continued to beckon to her.

      Kitty jumped down to see what it meant. “I must put something on, or I shall catch cold,” she remarked, glancing down at her night-gown; but as her feet touched the ground she perceived that she was ready dressed.

      “How won—” she began; then she paused, with her mouth open, looking at something much more extraordinary. Just outside her window spread a spacious flight of steps. Lovely stairs, white as pearl! On one side they towered upward, gleaming brighter and brighter till they touched the moon; on the other, they reached downward, till it made her dizzy to look. Far down as she could see the great white stairs reached.

      As Kitty stood on the ledge of her window, voices sounded around her; she thought she heard her mother’s voice, her father’s voice, nurse’s voice, calling: “Cure Johnnie! cure Johnnie!”

      A bell pealed from the church steeple; it seemed to call out: “Cure Johnnie!”

      Then other voices came again, floating along down or up the white stairs, she could not tell which, whispering:

      “Find the blue rose! Find the blue rose!”

      Was she to go up, or was she to go down those white stairs?

      The snow-man began to go down; Kitty followed him.

      “Hurry! hurry!” he panted impatiently. “I am beginning to melt. There is a great drop on my nose.”

      He descended with a certain stateliness of gait—gliding; then letting himself drop noiselessly over each step. Kitty perceived that this way of getting along was due to his having no feet—that his figure ended in a stump.

      Down, down they went, the snow-man going before, Kitty following.

      How still it was! Their footsteps made no noise. Not a breath stirred. Nothing was to be seen but those white stairs glimmering. Down—down.

      Every now and then the snow-man panted.

      “Hurry! hurry! I am melting!” and a morsel of him would disappear.

      His nose went; his pipe went; one after another his features went, till the face he occasionally turned toward Kitty was a flat white face like a plate. One arm went. Still gliding, dropping noiselessly over each step, down went the snow-man, and Kitty followed.

      As she followed she began to feel very vague. The lower she descended the less she could remember what she was going for. She was looking for something—something for Johnnie. But what was it? “What am I looking for?” she asked herself, shaking her head to shake off that dreaminess. “Is it that cake of gamboge?” No, it was not that. It was something else. Something she must find for Johnnie.

      After awhile she thought she was going down for something she wanted for herself—something she must find.

      “Oh, what is it I am looking for?” puzzled Kitty. “Is it that mince-pie?”

      She shook her head. “No, I don’t want that. It is something else.”

      “Is it the naughtiest child?” Kitty went on dreamily.

      “No, it cannot be that. I do not want to see the naughtiest child.”

      Down, down they went, the snow-man melting till he had dwindled to a stump. Still gliding, dropping noiselessly over each step, went this stump before Kitty.

      “Is it the moon I want?” she asked herself. As she said this drowsily the last bit of the snow-man melted away, and she found herself alone at the bottom of the stairs.

      The snow had disappeared. She was standing in a meadow full of cowslips. At a little distance stood a wicket-gate, and beyond the gate there was a wood; one of the trees overshadowed the gate.

      It was broad daylight. The summer had come; the trees were in full leaf. Kitty rubbed her eyes; but she did not feel surprised.

      In front of the gate stood the drollest creature Kitty had ever seen, dancing to its own shadow. Down to the waist it looked like a pretty boy; but it had hairy goat legs, a curling tail, and tiny horns. A pair of pointed ears showed through its curly black hair. Its skin was a golden brown. On seeing Kitty the queer little creature stopped just as it was setting off to run a race with itself. It had the wildest, brightest, blackest eyes.

      “Who are you?” he asked, fixing them upon her.

      “I!” answered Kitty. “I—why, of course—I am—I am—” Then she stopped; she could not remember who she was. “Where is mamma?” she cried, frightened at forgetting.

      “Mamma—you’ve no mamma—what was she like?” demanded the goat-legged creature, throwing back its goat-eared head and laughing.

      “Mamma—she was—she was—talking to me—just now—why—I can’t—I can’t remember what—she was saying;” and Kitty looked blankly