ent. But it had lifted her high, high above
the smallness of life, up to a rich realm of security in joy.

The snow fell more and more thickly, covering her as she stood with a
fine, soft mantle of white. She had heard the men that afternoon saying
they had seen signs of the winter break-up, and she wondered at it now,
looking about the frozen, buried, beautiful valley and up to the frozen
towering mountains, breathing in the cold air, as pure as the ether
itself. It seemed to her that spring was as remote and unreal and
impossible an imagination of the heart as a child's fairy-tale.

Then suddenly, bursting out of the dimming distance, close in front of
her, flying low, silently, strongly, a pair of wild geese went winging
off towards the north, their gray shapes the only moving thing in all
the frost-held world.

Marise drew a great breath of delight in their strong and purposeful
vitality. She looked after them, her heart rising and singing with
comradely pride in them. She would have liked to shout an exultant
greeting after them, "Hurrah!"

They went beating off, fast and straight, for their unseen destination,
while, treading the velvet-like snow-drifts with her strong free tread,
Marise went home.

[Illustration: Music]

VIII

March 2.

It was the first warm day of the year. The hard-frozen ruts of the road
thawed on top and glistened. The snow-banks shrank visibly from one hour
to the next under a warm wind and a hazy sun. The mountains were
unbelievably beautiful and seductive in a shimmer of blue and silver.
The children had brought home a branch of pussy-willows, and as Marise
and Neale stood for a moment at the open door breathing in the new
softness, they saw Toucle, old and stooped and shabby, her reticule bag
bulging, her flat feet in enormous overshoes plodding up the road
towards the mountain.

They smiled at one another. It was in truth the first day of spring.
Marise said, after a pause, "Do you know what she goes off for?"

Neale shook his head with a wide indifference as to the reason. "Because
she's an Injun," he conjectured casually.

"She told me once," said Marise, with a sudden wonder what Neale would
think of that glimpse into the old mystic's mind, how he would (for she
knew beforehand he would) escape the wistfulness which struck at her
even now, at the thought of that door to peace. She repeated to him word
for word what Toucle had told her on that hot August day.

Neale g