lity that surrounded the habitations. Howat was
suddenly conscious of the pressure of vast, unguessed regions, primitive
forces, illimitable wildernesses. It brought uppermost in him a
corresponding zest in the sheer spaciousness of the land, a feeling
always intensified by the thought of England. "The Province," he said
disjointedly, "a place for men. Did you see those that followed the road
this morning? Perhaps five with their women, some pack horses, kitchen
tins and hide tents. The men wore buckskin, and furred caps, and the
women's skirts were sewed leather. One was tramping along with a feeding
baby. Well, God knows where they have been, how many days they have
walked; their shoes were in shreds. And their faces, thin and serious,
have looked steadily over rifles at death. The women, too. You'll only
get them here, in a big country, a new--"

"They were terrible," Ludowika declared; "savage. I was glad when they
were by. The baby at the woman's great breast!" she shuddered at the
memory. "Like animals."

He gazed at her with a slight surprise; he had never heard her speak so
bitterly. He saw her more clearly than ever before; as if her words had
illuminated her extraordinary delicacy of being, had made visible all
the infinite refinements of which she was the result. He had a
recurrence of his sense of her incongruity here, balanced on polished
black pattens, against the darkening hills. The sun disappeared, there
was a cool flare of yellow light, and a feeling of impending evening.
The hills were indigo, the forest a dimmer gold, a wind moved audible in
the dry leaves.

Ludowika gasped. "It's so--so huge," she said, "all the lonely miles. At
times I can't bear to think of it." A faint dread invaded him. "Last
night, when I couldn't sleep, a thing howled in the woods. And I got
thinking of those naked men at the Forge, with their eyes rimmed in
black, and--and--"

He disregarded the publicity of their position and put an arm about her
shoulders, in an overwhelming impulse to calm and reassure her; but she
slipped away. "I'll be all right again," she promised; "but I think it's
more cheerful with the candles. We'll get your sister to play Belshazzar
and pretend we're across the green from St. James."

A mood darker than any he had lately known settled over him. It was
natural for Ludowika to be lonely, at first; but in a little she would
grow to love the wild like himself. She must. The Province was to be her