s needed here."

"Your father--?"

"Yes,--he needed me."

"There was Grega," I insisted. "She was the man of the family."

"She's married, you know."

I recalled having heard of an unsatisfactory marriage. So she had
escaped!

"And Martie?"

"Working at a store in town."

A dull rage charred at the inner fibres of my being. Here was Lisbeth,
the most delicate and responsible of them all, with, I supposed, much of
her mother's early gentleness and beauty, interred in this--. I did not
like to dwell on it. I switched back to skating.

"Come now. One does not forget these things at twenty or twenty-one."

She smiled at me ever so faintly, a smile that sent the winter chill of
that arid spot scurrying into my veins.

"One grows old fast--in the country," was all she said.

I thought of the flying figures that I had met in Norway and Sweden. It
was a moment before I spoke, and then I said the wrong thing.

"But it's this very sort of air, they say, that makes for vigor--and--"

"Yes," she said thinly, "those who live in cities--say so."

She turned, her meagre dress flapping about her knees like a flag. But
at the foot of the rickety outer steps that ran across the bare front of
the shack crookedly, like a broken arm, I caught her by the wrist.

"You'll be going to Mrs. Carn's funeral tomorrow, Lisbeth?"

She shook her head and I thought she paled.

It was an unheard of thing for the whole population not to turn out for
the funeral of one of the villagers, and Mrs. Carn, I knew, had
befriended Lisbeth, in spite of Old Con's displeasure. She must have
noted my surprise, for she turned on me squarely, facing me with what
seemed at the time an unnecessary display of staunchness.

"Perhaps you didn't know," she said very softly, "that the
Minister--couldn't come--and--"

She paused, while I made some inadequate reply, for I, too, seemed
caught in the sort of mirthless evasion that engulfed her.

"He--" she made a slight backwards motion of the head towards the upper
room of the shack--"is going to--preach."

My startled exclamation must have disclosed all the horror I felt at
this announcement, but, before I could speak again, she had gone swiftly
up the rickety steps and pushed shut the flimsy board door behind her.

The next afternoon was one that I have never been able to erase from my
mind, for even more vividly than my earlier impressions of Con Darton,
it marked the wizardry as well as the fearf