r not it was
her lost lover, returned to her at last.

Yet there could be no mistake. The voice was the same that she
remembered of old. It was as if it had spoken out of the dead years.
Her hands clasped at her breast, then she walked to the threshold and
opened the door.

Harold Lounsbury stepped through, blinking in the candlelight.
Instinctively the girl flung back, giving him full right of way and
staring as if he were a ghost. He turned to her, half apologetic.
"Bill told me to come," he said.

The man stood with arms limp at his side, and a great surge of mingled
emotions swept the girl as in a flood. She was pale as a ghost, and her
hands trembled when she stretched them out. "Harold," she murmured
unsteadily. She tried to smile. "Is it really you, Harold?"

"It's I," he answered. "We've come together--at last."

The words seemed to rally her scattered faculties. The dreamlike
quality of the scene at once dissolved. Utter and bewildering surprise
is never an emotion that can long endure; its very quality makes for
brevity. Already some leveling, cool sense within her had begun to
accept the fact of his presence.

Instinctively her eyes swept his face and form. All doubt was past:
this man was unquestionably Harold. Yet she was secretly and vaguely
shocked. Her first impression was one of change: that the years had
some way altered him,--other than the natural changes that no living
creature may escape.

In reality his face had aged but little. He had worn just such a
mustache when he went away. Perhaps his eyes were changed: for the
moment she thought that they were, and the change repelled her and
estranged her. His mouth was not quite right, either; his form, though
powerful, had lost some of its youthful trimness.

It seemed to her, for one fleeting instant, that there was a brutality
in his expression that she had never seen before. But at once the
reaction came. Of course these northern forests had changed him. He
had fought with the cold and the snow, with all the primeval forces of
nature: he had simply hardened and matured. It was true that the calm
strength of Bill's face was not to be seen in his. Nevertheless he was
clean, stalwart, and his embarrassment was a credit to him rather than a
discredit.

This thought was the beginning of the reaction that in a moment grasped
her and held her. The truth suddenly flamed clear and bright: that
Harold Lounsbury had returned t