ere must be any human presence it should be some savage clad in skins,
instead of the philosopher in his rubber boots and his clothing-store
ulster. He preferred the small, wiry shape of Jombateeste, in his blue
woollen cap and his Canadian footgear, as he ran round the corner of the
house toward the barn, and left the breath of his pipe in the fine air
behind him.

The light began to deepen from the pale pink to a crimson which stained
the tops and steeps of snow, and deepened the dark of the woods massed
on the mountain slopes between the irregular fields of white. The
burnished brown of the hard-wood trees, the dull carbon shadows of the
evergreens, seemed to wither to one black as the red strengthened in the
sky. Westover realized that he had lost the best of any possible picture
in letting that first delicate color escape him. This crimson was harsh
and vulgar in comparison; it would have almost a chromo quality; he
censured his pleasure in it as something gross and material, like that
of eating; and on a sudden he felt hungry. He wondered what time they
would give him supper, and he took slight account of the fact that a
caprice of the wind had torn its hood of snow from the mountain summit,
and that the profile of the Lion's Head showed almost as distinctly as
in summer. He stood before the picture which for that day at least
was lost to him, and questioned whether there would be a hearty meal,
something like a dinner, or whether there would be something like a
farmhouse supper, mainly of doughnuts and tea.

He pulled up his window and was going to lie down again, when some one
knocked, and Frank Whitwell stood at the door. "Do you want we should
bring your supper to you here, Mr. Westover, or will you--"

"Oh, let me join you all!" cried the painter, eagerly. "Is it
ready--shall I come now?"

"Well, in about five minutes or so." Frank went away, after setting
down in the room the lamp he had brought. It was a lamp which Westover
thought he remembered from the farm-house period, and on his way down he
realized as he had somehow not done in his summer sojourns, the entirety
of the old house in the hotel which had encompassed it. The primitive
cold of its stairways and passages struck upon him as soon as he left
his own room, and he found the parlor door closed against the chill.
There was a hot stove-fire within, and a kerosene-lamp turned low, but
there was no one there, and he had the photograph of his first