agged her chair out into the office, by the fire, while
she clung to the arms of it, as though in terror of tumbling out on to
the floor. And, in that brief journey from room to room, it flashed over
Henry Burns that the time and opportunity had come for him to know the
secret she possessed.

"Dan won't like to find you here," she muttered. "He ought to be
here--leaving me all alone. My, how it blows! How'd you get here,
anyway? Don't mind what Dan says; you'll have to stay."

"He'll not be here to-night, with this storm keeping up," answered Henry
Burns, "Where is he?"

"He went to town with Bess," said she. "Why don't she come? I'm lonesome
without her. I'm hungry, too. She ought to make me a cup of tea."

"I'll make it," said Henry Burns; "and I'll get something for myself,
too. I'll pay for it, so Witham won't lose by it."

He made his way to the kitchen and the pantry; lighted a fire in the
kitchen stove, and made tea for himself and Granny Thornton; and toasted
some bread for her. Then he foraged for himself and ate a hearty meal,
for he was ravenously hungry. And, all the while, he was thinking what
he should do and say to the old woman, nodding in the chair out in the
office.

He returned there, and put more wood on the fire, so that it blazed up
brightly, and the sparks shot up the flue with a roar. The roar was more
than answered by the wind outside. It rattled the glass in the windows,
and dashed the snow against them as though it would break them in. It
found a hundred cracks and crevices about the old inn, to moan and
shriek through, and blew a thin film of snow under the door.

Old Granny Thornton shook and quivered, as some of the sharper blasts
cried about the corners of the house. She seemed frightened; and once
she spoke up in a half whisper, and asked Henry Burns if he believed
there were ever spirits out on such a night as this. He would have
laughed away her fears, under ordinary circumstances; but it suited his
purpose better now to shake his head, and answer, truthfully enough,
that he didn't know.

Presently, the old woman started up in her chair and stared anxiously at
one of the snow-covered windows.

"They might be lost!" she cried, hoarsely. "They could be lost to-night
in this storm, like folks were in the great blizzard twenty years ago.
Oh, Bess"--she uttered the girl's name with a sob--"I hope you're safe.
You'd die in this snow. Say, boy, do you suppose they've got shelter?
It