ont door, when the store was closed. Then she put some papers away
in the safe under the counter and went up to the family sitting room,
where her mother was knitting and her father, with an open paper on
his lap and his spectacles pushed up over his forehead, was fast
asleep in a big and highly varnished oaken rocker trimmed with scarlet
plush.

"I'm goin' to bed," she announced; "good-night."

The old gentleman awoke with a start and the mother, looking over her
glasses, bade her good-night and sweet dreams, according to a
long-established formula.

"Don't know what's the matter with Sophy, she's that restless an'
nervous," said her mother.

"She always was, fur's I know," answered McGurn. "If she's gettin' the
complaint worse she must be sickenin' for something."

The subject of these remarks, once in her room, was in no hurry to woo
the slumber she had expressed a desire for. In her mind anxiety was
battling with anger and disappointment. Whether or not she really
loved Ennis, or had turned to him merely because his general ways and
appearance showed him to be a man of some breeding, with education
superior to the usual standard of Carcajou, such as she would have
been glad to marry, at any rate her brow narrowed, her lips closed
into a thin straight line and her hands were clenched tight. What she
had done would probably utterly prevent any renewal of the friendship
she had tried to establish, since Hugo would perhaps be run out of the
place. Moreover, that girl was really very pretty, in spite of what
she had said downstairs, and this stranger was now over there. Sophy
had expected to see her return with Stefan, perhaps also with Hugo,
and the girl's face would have shown marks of tears, and Hugo would
have been in a towering rage, and gradually the people of Carcajou
would have been made aware, somehow, of what had happened, and the
settler of Roaring Falls would be the butt of laughter, if not of
scurrilous remarks. But now the dark night had come and Carcajou was
very still under the starlight.

The old cat scratching at her door startled her. The profound silence
that followed appeared to irk her badly. After a long time there was
the shriek of the night-freight's whistle and the great rumbling of
the arriving train, the grinding of brakes, shouts that sounded
harshly, various loud thumps as cars were shunted off to the siding.
And then the train started again, groaning and clattering and heaving
up th