night's shelter at the farm, and
without answering I turned into the gate at his side, and followed him
to the barn, where I helped him to unharness and bed down the tired
horse. When this was done he unhooked the lantern from the sleigh,
stepped out again into the night, and called to me over his shoulder:
"This way."

Far off above us a square of light trembled through the screen of snow.
Staggering along in Frome's wake I floundered toward it, and in the
darkness almost fell into one of the deep drifts against the front of
the house. Frome scrambled up the slippery steps of the porch, digging
a way through the snow with his heavily booted foot. Then he lifted his
lantern, found the latch, and led the way into the house. I went
after him into a low unlit passage, at the back of which a ladder-like
staircase rose into obscurity. On our right a line of light marked the
door of the room which had sent its ray across the night; and behind the
door I heard a woman's voice droning querulously.

Frome stamped on the worn oil-cloth to shake the snow from his boots,
and set down his lantern on a kitchen chair which was the only piece of
furniture in the hall. Then he opened the door.

"Come in," he said; and as he spoke the droning voice grew still...

It was that night that I found the clue to Ethan Frome, and began to put
together this vision of his story.

I

The village lay under two feet of snow, with drifts at the windy
corners. In a sky of iron the points of the Dipper hung like icicles
and Orion flashed his cold fires. The moon had set, but the night was
so transparent that the white house-fronts between the elms looked gray
against the snow, clumps of bushes made black stains on it, and the
basement windows of the church sent shafts of yellow light far across
the endless undulations.

Young Ethan Frome walked at a quick pace along the deserted street, past
the bank and Michael Eady's new brick store and Lawyer Varnum's house
with the two black Norway spruces at the gate. Opposite the Varnum gate,
where the road fell away toward the Corbury valley, the church reared
its slim white steeple and narrow peristyle. As the young man walked
toward it the upper windows drew a black arcade along the side wall of
the building, but from the lower openings, on the side where the ground
sloped steeply down to the Corbury road, the light shot its long bars,
illuminating many fresh furrows in the track leading to the