ad been sauntering aimlessly
about, came to him.

"If I don't go with the boat to-morrow," she said, "I'll walk across as
soon as the ice'll bear."

With that he turned upon her. "And if I was a worse man than I am I'd
let ye. It would be a comfort to me to be rid of ye. Where would ye go,
or what would ye do? Ye ought to be only too thankful to have a
comfortable home where ye're kept from harm. It's a cruel and bad world,
I tell ye; it's going to destruction as fast as it can, and ye'd go
with it."

The girl shook with passion. "I'd do nothing of the sort," she choked.

All the anger and dignity of her being were aroused, but it did not
follow that she had any power to give them adequate utterance. She
turned from him, and, as she stood, the attitude of her whole figure
spoke such incredulity, scorn, and anger, that the flow of hot-tempered
arguments with which he was still ready to seek to persuade her reason,
died on his lips. He lost all self-control in increasing ill-temper.

"Ye may prance and ye may dance"--he jerked the phrase between his
teeth, using words wholly inapplicable to her attitude because he could
not analyse its offensiveness sufficiently to find words that applied to
it. "Yes, prance and dance as much as ye like, but ye'll not go in the
boat to-morrow if ye'd six fathers to bury instead of one, and ye'll not
set foot out of this clearing, where I can look after ye. I said to the
dead I'd take care of ye, and I'll do it--ungrateful lass though ye
are."

He hurled the last words at her as he turned and went into a shed at
the side of the house in which he had before been working.

The girl stood quite still as long as he was within sight. She seemed
conscious of his presence though she was not looking towards him, for as
soon as he had stepped within the low opening of the shed, she moved
away, walking in a wavering track across the tilled land, walking as if
movement was the end of her purpose, not as if she had destination.

The frozen furrows of the ploughed land crumbled beneath her heavy
tread. The north wind grew stronger. When she reached the edge of the
maple wood and looked up with swollen, tear-blurred eyes, she saw the
grey branches moved by the wind, and the red squirrels leaped from
branch to branch and tree to tree as if blown by the same air. She
wandered up one side of the clearing and down the other, sometimes
wading knee-deep in loud rustling maple leaves gathered in dry h