om alone with Anita, but always near her. He left
Marie sulking or sewing, as the case might be. He returned in the
evening to find her still sulking, still sewing.

But Marie did not sulk all day, or sew. She too was out, never far from
Stewart, always watching. Many times she escaped discovery only by a
miracle, as when she stooped behind an oxcart, pretending to tie her
shoe, or once when they all met face to face, and although she lowered
her veil Stewart must have known her instantly had he not been so intent
on helping Anita over a slippery gutter.

She planned a dozen forms of revenge and found them impossible of
execution. Stewart himself was frightfully unhappy. For the first
time in his life he was really in love, with all the humility of the
condition. There were days when he would not touch Anita's hand, when
he hardly spoke, when the girl herself would have been outraged at
his conduct had she not now and then caught him watching her, seen the
wretchedness in his eyes.

The form of Marie's revenge was unpremeditated, after all. The light
mountain snow was augmented by a storm; roads were ploughed through
early in the morning, leaving great banks on either side. Sleigh-bells
were everywhere. Coasting parties made the steep roads a menace to
the pedestrian; every up-climbing sleigh carried behind it a string of
sleds, going back to the starting-point.

Below the hotel was the Serpentine Coast, a long and dangerous course,
full of high-banked curves, of sudden descents, of long straightaway
dashes through the woodland. Two miles, perhaps three, it wound its
tortuous way down the mountain. Up by the highroad to the crest again,
only a mile or less. Thus it happened that the track was always clear,
except for speeding sleds. No coasters, dragging sleds back up the
slide, interfered.

The track was crowded. Every minute a sled set out, sped down the
straightaway, dipped, turned, disappeared. A dozen would be lined up,
waiting for the interval and the signal. And here, watching from the
porch of the church, in the very shadow of the saints, Marie found her
revenge.

Stewart had given her a little wrist watch. Stewart and Anita
were twelfth in line. By the watch, then, twelve minutes down the
mountain-side, straight down through the trees to a curve that Marie
knew well, a bad curve, only to be taken by running well up on the
snowbank. Beyond the snowbank there was a drop, fifteen feet, perhaps
more, into t