fore the fire, head bent
forward, as though he had an audience. I shrank back closer into the
shadows, drawing my coat collar more snugly about my throat. It was
incredible that he should play a part before her--and now alone! His
very posture suggested a martyred, deserted old man. I felt myself in
the presence of something inexplicable.--Then, in a frenzy of suppressed
rancor, such as I had never felt before, I climbed the hill, the lumps
of mud and ice seeming to cling against my footsteps as I went.

* * * * *

The winter was a bitter one that year, such as only the winters in that
Northern, prostrate land can be. The countryside appeared to crouch
under a passive, laden-colored sky. Then the snow came settling in
deeper and deeper layers, and, as it packed down, a coating of thin ice
formed on its surface. One could walk on it at times, this crust that
had grown over the land like a new skin.

We smuggled sweaters and coats to Lisbeth, making them old lest Con
suspect us. But, even with all we could do for her, her suffering must
have been without comparison. There was no fire in the shack except that
in the old rusty cook stove which she tended, and the cold made an easy
entrance through the loose carpentry of the walls. With it all there
were the loneliness and the mental agony. At first, when she did not
know how deep was Jim's devotion, there must have been times when life
held out no promise to her except that of escape.

All this time the rest of the Dartons gave no sign. Old Con, I
discovered, made occasional obscure trips to the city where he saw Lin
Darton and Miss Etta, the former established as a second-rate
real-estate dealer, the latter, as buyer for a large department store.
Later it became more apparent that it was after these trips of his that
he was able to purchase another horse. He quoted more and more
frequently from the Bible and the "Elegy." Such feeling as any of the
neighbors may have had for Lisbeth was now completely turned aside by
her tight-lipped reticence and her deft evasion of all references to her
situation. Old Con was thoroughly established as a brilliant fellow,
ruined by his family.

From the first I saw that the winter had to be endured like a famine.
Keep Jim away of course I could not, though I did persuade him, by dint
of much argument, that it would be for Lisbeth's good to meet her away
from the mill house; and what pleading he may have