let it go on; and he took her away from them six months after she saw
him first. That's happiness, if you call it so!"

Again I added, "It is life."

"There was not much left of it in this house after she went," Joshua
mused. "It was then they asked me to come up and stay with them. A
silence of three does not press quite so close as a silence of two. And
we talked sometimes. The mine had taken a great jump; it was almost a
mockery the way things boomed. The letters, I noticed, were not what the
schoolgirl letters had been to her mother. They came all right, they
were punctual, but something I felt sure was wrong. Mrs. Fleming would
not have missed a mail for anything in the world--every hour's delay
wore upon her. She would play her game of solitaire, long after bedtime,
at that desk by the drop-light. It seemed she could not read; nothing
held her. She was irritable with Fleming, and then she would pet him
piteously to make up. He was always gentle. He would watch her over his
book as she walked up and down in the back room in the light between the
dining-room curtains. If he saw I noticed, he'd look away and begin to
talk.

"I have gone a little ahead of my story, for this was after the dark
weather came on and the mails were behind; we knew there was some new
strain on her spirits. You could see her face grow small and her flesh
waste away.

"One night we sat here, Fleming and I, and she was pacing in her soft,
weary way in the back of the room. There came a knock. It was Gideon's,
yet none of us heard the gate click nor any step outside. She stood
back, for she never showed any impatience--she tried to pretend that she
expected nothing. Fleming opened the door; he stood there an instant
looking out.

"'Didn't you hear a knock?' he asked me. Before I could answer he went
outside, closing the door, and we heard him go down the steps slowly.

"When he came in he merely said, 'A jar of wind.

"'A jar of wind!' Mrs. Fleming mocked him. The knock came again as she
spoke. Once, twice, then the light tap: I have described Gideon's knock.
We did not pretend again it was the wind.

"'You go this time;' Fleming tried to laugh. 'See if there is anything
doing.'

"There was nothing doing whatever, and nothing to be seen. I turned on
the electrics outside, and Fleming, seeing the light, came out to join
me. I asked him if those were his tracks--a man's footsteps could be
seen printed in the fresh, light snow as far a