the tramp of feet on her threshold she didn't dream
but that Bill had returned a day earlier than he had planned. Her heart
gave a queer little flutter of relief. The cabin had been lonely
to-night, the silence had oppressed her; most of all she had dreaded the
long night without the comforting reassurance of his presence. She
wouldn't have admitted, even to herself, that her comfort was so
dependent upon this man. And she sprang up, joyously as a bird
springing from a bough, to welcome him.

The next instant she stopped, appalled. The door did not open, the
steps did not cross her threshold. Instead, knuckles rapped feebly on
the door.

Even in a city, it is a rather discomforting experience for a girl,
alone in a home at night, to answer a tap on the door. Here in this
awful silence and solitude she was simply and wholly terrified. She
hadn't dreamed that there was a stranger within many miles of the cabin.
For an instant she didn't know what to do. The knock sounded again.

But Virginia had acquired a certain measure of self-discipline in these
weary weeks, and her mind at once flashed to her pistol. Fortunately
she had not taken it from her belt, and she had full confidence in her
ability to shoot it quickly and well. Besides, she remembered that her
door was securely bolted.

"Who's there?" she asked. "Is it you, Bill?"

"It's not Bill," the answer came. "But he's here."

The first thought that came to her was that Bill had been injured, hurt
in some adventure in the snow, and men had brought him back to the
cabin. Something that was like a sickness surged through her frame.
But an instant more she knew that, had he been injured, there would have
been no wayfarers to find him and bring him in. There was only one
remaining possibility: that this man was one whom Bill had gone out to
find and who had returned with him.

The thought was so startling, so fraught with tremendous possibilities
that for a moment she seemed to lose all power of speech or action.

"Who is it?" she asked again, steadily as she could.

And the answer came strange and stirring through the heavy door. "It's
I--Harold Lounsbury. Bill told me to come."

Virginia was oppressed and baffled as if in a mysterious dream. For the
moment she stood still, trying to quiet her leaping heart and her
fluttering nerves. Yet she knew she had to make answer. She knew that
she must find out whether this voice spoke true--whether o