prospect of her own going. Then
she ordered her husband imperiously into his boots and great-coat and
tippet, and sent him forth.

She finished the gruel, and took it in to the sick man, and fed him
with hard thrusts of the spoon. Lot looked about feebly for Madelon,
and Margaret Bean replied to the look, in her husky voice, "She's
gone, instead of me. I've got rheumatism too bad to venture out in
such a storm and get my petticoats bedraggled." She spoke with a
little whine of defiant crying, but Lot took no notice. He was
exhausted. After he had eaten the gruel, he pointed to the
chimney-cupboard.

"What is it ye want?" said she.

Lot pointed.

"How do I know what ye want when ye jest p'int like that?"

But there came then a look into Lot Gordon's eyes as expressive as a
word, and Margaret Bean crossed over to the chimney-cupboard, and got
out the brandy-flask and a wine-glass and some loaf-sugar. She mixed
a little dose of the brandy and sugar, and would have fed it to the
sick man as she had the gruel, but he motioned her aside, raised
himself with an effort, and drank it down eagerly. Then he lay still,
and soon a faint flush came into his face. Margaret Bean went back
into the kitchen and mixed some bread, with her eye upon the window.

Presently there was a wild gallop and great clash of bells past the
window, and a shout at the door. Margaret Bean put on her little blue
shawl and opened it when the shout had been twice repeated. Old David
Hautville sat there in his sleigh, keeping a tight rein on his
tugging roan. "My daughter here?" he shouted. "Whoa, there!"

"There's sick folks here," said Margaret Bean, shivering in the
doorway. "You hadn't ought to holler so." Her tearful eyes were more
frankly hostile than usual. She had always looked down from her own
slight eminence of life upon these Hautvilles, and now was full of
scorn that her master was to marry one of them.

"I want to know if my daughter is here," said David Hautville, and he
did not lower his voice. It sounded like a hoarse bellow of wrath,
coming out of the white whirl of snow. His fur coat was all crusted
with snow, his great mustache heavy with it; the roan plunged in a
rising cloud of it.

"No, she ain't here," replied Margaret Bean, and her weak voice
seemed by its very antithesis to express the utmost scorn and disgust
at the brutality of the other.

"Has she been here?"

"Yes, she's been here." Margaret made as though to s