each step, and her footprints filled with shadows
as she passed on, blackening her way over the universal whiteness that
covered the earth. Thus it had always been in her life--that woman never
moved without leaving shadows and darkness behind her.

She came forward, guided by the wail of Fair-Star, tramping down the
snow and breathing heavily, from her up-hill toil.

At last her searching eyes detected the black sleeve, which fell away
from an arm flung upward, as if its owner had made a vain effort to
prevent herself falling. And there prone upon the earth, her garments
frozen stiff, till they rattled to the touch, and covered with a slight
sprinkling of snow, which had fallen off in waves during her struggles
to rise, the woman found Lina French.

A cold, half-sneering smile at the easy success of her own schemes,
stole over the woman's face, but as she stooped and touched the cold
hand with her finger, the smile gave way to a look of affright, and
bending down, she raised the prostrate girl in her arms, tearing her
garments up from the ice, and wrenching open a little gate, before which
Lina had fallen, bore her into the house.

Fair-Star followed, shivering and whining, with a piteous attempt at
joy, and, after a moment, both the mistress and her hound lay upon a
mattress the woman had dragged from the next room, and spread upon the
hearth-stone, which a bed of hot ashes had kept warm. With a look of
wild apprehension, the woman whom we have seen in her rooms at New York,
and later, in General Harrington's library--proceeded to divest the cold
form before her of its frozen garments.

She took the fur mantle from her shoulders, and folded it over the
insensible girl; then dragging blankets and quilts from the next room,
heaped them over her, burying poor little Fair-Star up with his
mistress, while she proceeded to rake open the fire and throw armful
after armful of dry wood upon it. The woman was evidently well prepared
for this task of humanity, for, as the fire blazed up and went roaring
in a volume of flame through the chimney, she began to chafe the small
hands and feet buried in those blankets, and from time to time rubbed
the pale lips with brandy.

It was long before the half-perished girl began to feel the warmth,
great as it was. The woman kept on her labor patiently, but she grew
paler and more anxious each moment, fearing that the young creature was
really dead. At last, the little hound, revived