self on
a chair outside her door to watch and wait.

* * * * *

All night long it snowed hard over the Star Pond country, and the late
grey light of morning revealed a blinding storm pelting a white robed
world.

Toward ten o'clock, Stormont, on guard, noticed that Eve was growing
restless.

Downstairs the flotsam of the forest had gathered again: Mr. Lyken was
there in black gloves; the Reverend Laomi Smatter had arrived in a
sleigh from Ghost Lake. Both were breakfasting heavily.

The pretty, sulky-faced girl fetched a tray and placed Eve's breakfast
on it; and Trooper Stormont carried it to her room.

She was awake when he entered. He set the tray on the table. She put
both her arms around his neck.

"Jack," she murmured, her eyes tremulous with tears.

"Everything has been done," he said. "Will you be ready by eleven?
I'll come for you."

She clung to him in silence for a while.

* * * * *

At eleven he knocked on her door. She opened it. She wore her black
wool gown and a black fur turban. Some of her pallor remained -- traces
of tears and bluish smears under both eyes. But her voice was steady.

"Could I see Dad a moment alone?"

"Of course."

She took his arm: they descended the stairs. There seemed to be many
people about but she did not lift her eyes until her lover led her into
the dance hall where Clinch lay smiling his mysterious smile.

Then Stormont left her alone there and closed the door.

* * * * *

In a terrible snow-storm they buried Mike Clinch on the spot he had
selected, in order that he might keep a watchful eye on the trespassing
ghost of old man Harrod.

It blew and stormed and stormed, and the thin, nasal voice of "Rev.
Smatter" was utterly lost in the wind. The slanting laces of snow drove
down on the casket, building a white mound over the flowers, blotting
the hemlock boughs from sight.

There was no time to be lost now; the ground was freezing under a
veering and bitter wind out of the west. Mr. Lyken's talented
assistants had some difficulty in shaping the mound which snow began to
make into a white and flawless monument.

The last slap of the spade rang with a metallic jar across the lake,
where snow already blotted the newly forming film of ice; the human
denizens of the wilderness filtered back into it one by one; "Rev.
Smatter" got into his sleigh, plainly concerned about the road; Mr.
Lyken betrayed unprofessional haste in loading his wagon with