she began to explore the mountain game trails, her life seemed
as full of pleasantness as it could hold. And yet ... with just that gift
of Hilliard's, the overshadowing of her joy began. No, really before
that, with his first visit.

That was in late September when the nights were frosty and Miss Blake had
begun to cut and stack her wood for winter, and to use it for a crackling
hearth-fire after supper. They were sitting before such a fire when
Hilliard came.

Miss Blake sat man-fashion on the middle of her spine, her legs crossed,
a magazine in her hands, and on her blunt nose a pair of large,
black-rimmed spectacles. Her feet and hands and her cropped head, though
big for a woman's, looked absurdly small in comparison to the breadth of
her hips and shoulders. She was reading the "Popular Science Monthly."
This and the "Geographic" and "Current Events" were regularly taken by
her and most thoroughly digested. She read with keen intelligence; her
comments were as shrewd as a knife-edge. The chair she sat in was made
from elk-horns and looked like the throne of some Norse chieftain. Behind
her on the wall hung the stuffed head of a huge walrus, his tusks
gleaming, the gift of that exploring brother who seemed to be her only
living relative. There were other tokens of his wanderings, a polar-bear
skin, an ivory Eskimo spear. As a more homelike trophy Miss Blake had
hung an elk head which she herself had laid low, a very creditable shot,
though out of season. She had been short of meat. In the corner was a
pianola topped by piles of record-boxes. At her feet lay Berg, the dog,
snoring faintly and as cozy as a kitten.

The firelight made Miss Blake's face and hair ruddier than usual; her
eyes, when she raised them for a glance at Sheila, looked as though they
were full of red sparks which might at any instant break into flame.
Sheila was wearing one of her flimsy little black frocks, recovered from
the wrinkles of its journey, and she had decorated her square-cut neck
with some yellow flowers. On these Miss Blake's eyes rested every now
and then with a sardonic gleam.

Outside Hidden Creek told its interminable chattering tale, centuries
long, the little skinny horse cropped getting his difficult meal with
his few remaining teeth. They could hear the dogs move with a faint
rattle of chains. Sometimes there would be a distant rushing sound, a
snow-slide thousands of feet above their heads on the mountain. Above
these