e I wish it?"

"You have my promise."

He walked toward the window and stood looking out for a moment or two
before he turned to her again.

"Don't you think you had better start for home? The moon looks hazy. May
I drive out with you?"

Muriel had shrunk from the long journey in the dark, and she readily
agreed.

"I'll tell them to bring your team round," he said, moving toward the
door. "Get off as soon as you're ready, and I'll come along when I've
collected a few things I bought."

The girl let him go, appreciating his consideration, for she guessed his
thoughts. He was under suspicion and would give the tatlers in the town
nothing on which to base conjectures. It hurt her pride, however, to
admit that such precautions had better be taken.

Leaving the hotel, she found the trail smooth when she had crossed the
track, but after she passed the last of the fences the waste looked very
dreary. The moon was dimmed by thin, driving clouds, and the deep silence
grew depressing; the loneliness weighed on her, and she began to listen
eagerly for the beat of hoofs. For a time she heard nothing and she had
grown angry with Prescott for delaying when a measured drumming stole out
of the distance and her feeling of cheerfulness and security returned.
Its significance was not lost on her: she was learning to depend on the
man, to long for his society. Then, for no obvious reason, she urged the
team and kept ahead for a while. When he came up with an explanation
about a missing package, she laughed half-mockingly, and on the whole
felt glad that the narrowness of the trail, which compelled him to
follow, made conversation difficult.

An hour after she left the settlement the moon was hidden and fine snow
began to fall. It grew thicker, gradually covering the trail, until
Muriel had some difficulty in distinguishing it. The sleigh was running
heavily, and after a while Prescott told her to stop.

"I'll go ahead, and then you can follow my buggy," he said. "There won't
be much snow."

Muriel felt that there was quite enough to have made her very anxious had
she been alone, but when he passed and took his place in front she drove
on in confidence. She remembered that this was not a new feeling. He was
a man who could be trusted; one felt safe with him. Now and then she
could hardly see the buggy and she was glad of his cheery laugh and the
somewhat inconsequent remarks he flung back to her when the haze of
driving flakes