." He stood looking very suspiciously out, and so good
was his acting, if it was acting, that Caius, who came and looked over
his shoulder, had a superstitious feeling when he saw the blank,
untrodden snow stretching wide and white into the glimmering night. He
remembered that the one relative he believed the lady to have had
appeared to him in strange places and vanished strangely.

"You didn't hear a knock; you were dreaming." Caius began to button on
his coat.

"I wasn't even asleep." O'Shea gave a last suspicious look to the
outside.

"O'Shea," said Caius, "has--has Madame Le Maitre a daughter?"

The farmer turned round to him in astonishment. "Bless my heart alive,
no!"

The snow was only two or three inches deep when Caius walked home; it
was light as plucked swan's-down about his feet. Everywhere it was
falling slowly in small dry flakes. There was little wind to make eddies
in it. The waning moon had not yet risen, but the landscape, by reason
of its whiteness, glimmered just visible to the sight.

CHAPTER XII.

THE MAIDEN INVENTED.

The fishing-boats and small schooners were dragged high up on the beach.
The ice formed upon the bay that lay in the midst of the islands. The
carpet of snow grew more and more thick upon field and hill, and where
the dwarf firwoods grew so close that it could not pass between their
branches, it draped them, fold above fold, until one only saw the green
here and there standing out from the white garment.

In these days a small wooden sleigh was given to Caius, to which he
might harness his horse, and in which he might sit snug among oxskins if
he preferred that sort of travelling to riding. Madame Le Maitre still
rode, and Caius discarded his sleigh and rode also. Missing the warmth
of the skins, he was soon compelled by the cold to copy Robinson Crusoe
and make himself breeches and leggings of the hides.

In these first weeks one hope was always before his eyes. In every new
house which he entered, at every turn of the roads, which began to be
familiar to him, he hoped to see the maiden who had followed him upon
the beach. He dreamed of her by night; he not only hoped, he expected to
see her each day. It was of course conceivable that she might have
returned to some other island of the group; but Caius did not believe
this, because he felt convinced she must be under the protection of his
friends; and also, since he had arrived the weather had been such that
it