Ward Warren was reading it now; avidly, absorbedly, lost to his
surroundings--to her own presence, if you please! Billy Louise glanced
at her mother. That lady, having discovered that her guest's gloves
needed mending, was working over them with pieces of Indian-tanned
buckskin and beeswaxed thread, the picture of domestic content.

Billy Louise sighed. She shifted her chair. She got up and put a
heavy chunk of wood on the fire and glanced over her shoulder at the
man to see if he were going to take the hint and offer to help. She
came back and stood close to him while she selected, with great
deliberation, a book from the shelf beside his head. And Ward Warren,
perfectly normal and not over twenty-five or so, pushed his chair out
of her way with a purely mechanical movement, and read and read, and
actually was too absorbed to feel her nearness. And he really was
reading _The Ring and the Book_; Billy Louise was rude enough to look
over his shoulder to make sure of that. She gave up, then, and though
she picked a book at random from the shelf, she did not attempt to read
it. She went to her room and made it ready for their guest, and after
that she went to bed in her mother's room; and she thought and thought
and did a lot of wondering about Life and about Ward Warren. She heard
him go to bed, after a long while, and she wondered if he had finished
the book first.

The next morning the blizzard raged so that he stayed as a matter of
course. Peter Howling Dog had not returned, so Warren did the chores
and would not let Billy Louise help with anything. He filled the
wood-box, piled great chunks of wood by the fireplace, and saw that the
water-pails were full to the icy brims. He talked a little, and Billy
Louise discovered that he was quick to see a joke, and that he simply
could not be caught napping, but had always a retort ready for her.
That was true until after dinner, when he picked up a book again. When
that happened, he was dead to the world bounded by the coulee walls,
and he did not show any symptoms of consciousness until he had reached
the last page, just when the light was growing dim and blurring the
lines so that he must hold the pages within six inches of his eyes. He
closed the book with a long breath, placed it accurately upon the shelf
where it had stood since Billy Louise came home from school, and picked
up his hat and gloves. It was time to wade out through the snow and
feed the stoc