rs closer
about them, and slipped an arm round her waist. She began to feel the cold
again, and the loneliness more, while, even when she closed her eyes, she
could not shut out the menacing darkness in front of her. Miss Schuyler
was from the cities, and it was not her fault that, while she possessed
sufficient courage of a kind, she shrank from the perils of the
wilderness. She would have found silence trying, but the vague sounds
outside, to which she could attach no meaning, were more difficult to
bear. So she started when a puff of wind set the birch twigs rattling or
something stirred the withered leaves, and once or twice a creaking branch
sent a thrill of apprehension through her and she almost fancied that evil
faces peered at her from the square gap of blackness. Now and then, a wisp
of pungent smoke curled up and filled her eyes, and little by little she
drew nearer to the fire with a physical craving for the warmth of it and
an instinctive desire to be surrounded by its brightness, until Hetty
shook her roughly by the arm.

"Flo," she said, "you are making me almost as silly as you are, and that
capote--it's the prettiest I have seen you put on--is burning. Sit still,
or I'll pinch you--hard."

Hetty's grip had a salutary effect, and Miss Schuyler, shaking off her
vague terrors, smiled a trifle tremulously.

"I wish you would," she said. "Your fingers are real, any way. I can't
help being foolish, Hetty--and is the thing actually burning?"

Hetty laughed. "I guessed that would rouse you--but it is," she said. "I
have made my mind up, Flo. If he doesn't come in an hour or so, we'll go
to Muller's, too."

Miss Schuyler was by no means sure that this would please her, but she
said nothing and once more there was a silence she found it difficult to
bear.

In the meanwhile, Clavering, whose foot pained him, was urging the Badger
to his utmost pace. He rode without saddle or stirrups, which, however,
was no great handicap to anyone who had spent the time he had in the
cattle country, and, though it was numbingly cold and he had left his furs
behind him, scarcely felt the frost, for his brain was busy. He knew Hetty
Torrance, and that what he had done would count for much with her; but
that was not what had prompted him to make the somewhat perilous venture.
Free as he was in his gallantries, he was not without the chivalrous
daring of the South his fathers came from, and Hetty was of his own caste.
She, at