ake his way,
he had less time to think of the probable futility of his proceeding.

Long before he sighted the hut, he was wet to the waist, not only
because he had been in half a dozen drifts, but because the snow had
penetrated every crevice of his clothing.

The hut was a forlorn little spot upon the landscape, a patch of grey on
the stretch of forest and snow. A shutter blowing in the wind gave an
impression of desertion, for how could any one, however wretched, sit
idle under that recurrent bang?

Drawing his revolver, Geoffrey approached the door. He had no intention
of giving a possible enemy an opportunity to prepare himself, and so did
not knock, but, putting his shoulder against the door, shoved mightily.
The hinges broke from the rotten wood at once, and he stumbled in.

The pale light of the early winter morning showed a depressing interior,
for the window was not the only opening. There was a great gap in the
roof where, earlier in the night, the chimney had fallen, and now its
bricks littered the floor, already well covered with snow. Some attempt
must have been made, as McVay had boasted, of "fixing it up"; there were
books in the shelves on the walls, and a black iron stove on which the
snow now lay fearlessly. As Geoffrey took in the situation, something in
a huge chair, which he had taken for a heap of rugs, stirred and moved,
and finally rose, betraying itself to be a woman. Geoffrey had been
prepared to find a den of thieves, or nothing at all, or even a girl, as
McVay had said. He told himself he would be surprised at nothing, yet
found himself astounded, overwhelmed at the sight of a beautiful face.

The girl must have been beautiful so to triumph over her surroundings,
for all sorts of strange garments were huddled about her, and over all a
silk coverlet originally tied like a shawl under her chin, had slipped
sideways, and fell like a Hussar's jacket from one shoulder. Her hair
stood like a dark halo about her little face, making it seem smaller and
younger, almost too small for the magnificent eyes that lit it.
Geoffrey, tolerably well versed in feminine attractions, said to himself
that he had never seen such blue eyes.

And suddenly while he looked at her and her desperate plight, pity
became in him a sort of fury of protection, the awakening of the
masculine instinct toward beauty in distress. It was a feeling that the
other women he had admired--well-fed, well-clothed, well-cared-for yo