, I didn't know--"

"She said you were on the ice, and that you didn't know about the big
breaking-up, and she cried to us that the wind was off shore and the
rift widening. She cried over and over again that you could come in by
the old French creek if you only knew--"

"I came in that way."

"But how did you come to do that? It's out of the path. We thought
perhaps--"

But Hagadorn broke in with his story and told him all as it had come to
pass.

That day they watched beside the maiden, who lay with tapers at her head
and at her feet, and in the little church the bride who might have been
at her wedding said prayers for her friend. They buried Marie Beaujeu in
her bridesmaid white, and Hagadorn was before the altar with her, as he
had intended from the first! Then at midnight the lovers who were to
wed whispered their vows in the gloom of the cold church, and walked
together through the snow to lay their bridal wreaths upon a grave.

Three nights later, Hagadorn skated back again to his home. They wanted
him to go by sunlight, but he had his way, and went when Venus made her
bright path on the ice.

The truth was, he had hoped for the companionship of the white skater.
But he did not have it. His only companion was the wind. The only voice
he heard was the baying of a wolf on the north shore. The world was as
empty and as white as if God had just created it, and the sun had not
yet colored nor man defiled it.

THEIR DEAR LITTLE GHOST

THE first time one looked at Elsbeth, one was not prepossessed. She was
thin and brown, her nose turned slightly upward, her toes went in just
a perceptible degree, and her hair was perfectly straight. But when one
looked longer, one perceived that she was a charming little creature.
The straight hair was as fine as silk, and hung in funny little braids
down her back; there was not a flaw in her soft brown skin, and her
mouth was tender and shapely. But her particular charm lay in a look
which she habitually had, of seeming to know curious things--such as it
is not allotted to ordinary persons to know. One felt tempted to say to
her:

"What are these beautiful things which you know, and of which others are
ignorant? What is it you see with those wise and pellucid eyes? Why is
it that everybody loves you?"

Elsbeth was my little godchild, and I knew her better than I knew any
other child in the world. But still I could not truthfully say that I
was familiar with her