r sound came from that
direction, and after a few minutes of silent terror she was allowing
herself to believe that she had been deceived by her fears when she
suddenly heard the same sound at the kitchen door, followed by a muffled
knock.

Frightened now in good earnest, but still alive to the fact that the
intruder was as likely to be a friend as a foe, she stepped to the door,
and with her hand on the lock stooped and asked boldly enough who was
there. But she received no answer, and more affected by this unexpected
silence than by the knock she had heard she recoiled farther and farther
till not only the width of the kitchen, but the dining-room also, lay
between her and the scene of her alarm, when to her utter confusion the
noise shifted again to the side of the house, and the door she thought
so securely fastened, swung violently open as if blown in by a fierce
gust, and she saw precipitated into the entry the burly figure of a man
covered with snow and shaking with the violence of the storm that seemed
at once to fill the house.

Her first thought was that it was her husband come back, but before she
could clear her eyes from the cloud of snow which had entered with him
he had thrown off his outer covering and she found herself face to face
with a man in whose powerful frame and cynical visage she saw little to
comfort her and much to surprise and alarm.

"Ugh!" was his coarse and rather familiar greeting. "A hard night,
missus! Enough to drive any man indoors. Pardon the liberty, but I
couldn't wait for you to lift the latch; the wind drove me right in."

"Was--was not the door locked?" she feebly asked, thinking he must have
staved it in with his foot, that looked only too well fitted for such a
task.

"Not much," he chuckled. "I s'pose you're too hospitable for that."
And his eyes passed from her face to the comfortable firelight shining
through the sitting-room.

"Is it refuge you want?" she demanded, suppressing as much as possible
all signs of fear.

"Sure, missus--what else! A man can't live in a gale like that,
specially after a tramp of twenty miles or more. Shall I shut the door
for you?" he asked, with a mixture of bravado and good nature that
frightened her more and more.

"I will shut it," she replied, with a half notion of escaping this
sinister stranger by a flight through the night.

But one glance into the swirling snow-storm deterred her, and making the
best of the alarming situatio