in, still running, her yellow hair fluttering
wildly about her head. He put his hands to his mouth and shouted. The
echoes floated away over the desolate ice-hills, growing ever colder
and feebler, like some abstract sound, deprived of its human quality.
The girl, glancing back over her shoulder, showed a fair face,
convulsed with agitation, paused for an instant to look again, and
then dropped upon a stone in a state of utter collapse. One moment
more and he was at her side. She was lying with her face downward, her
blue eyes distended with fright, and her hands clutching some tufts of
moss which she had unconsciously torn from the sides of the stone.

"My dear child," he said, stooping down over her (there was always
something fatherly in his manner toward those who were suffering),
"what is it that has frightened you so? It is surely not I you are
afraid of?"

The girl moved her head slightly, and her lips parted as with an
effort to speak; but no sound came.

Fern seized her hand, and put his forefinger on her pulse.

"By Jove, child," he exclaimed, "how you have been running!"

There was to him something very pathetic in this silent resignation of
terror. All the tenderness of his nature was stirred; for, like many
another undemonstrative person, he hid beneath a horny epidermis of
apathy some deep-hued, warm-blooded qualities.

"There now," he continued, soothingly; "you will feel better in a
moment. Remember there is nothing to be afraid of. There is nobody
here who will do you any harm."

The young girl braced herself up on her elbow, and threw an anxious
glance down the path.

"It surely was the devil," she whispered, turning with a look of shy
appeal toward her protector.

"The devil? Who was the devil?"

"He was all black, and he grinned at me so horribly;" and she trembled
anew at the very thought.

"Don't be a little goose," retorted he, laughing. "It was a far less
important personage. It was my servant, Jake. And it was God who made
him black, just for the sake of variety, you know. It would be rather
monotonous to have everybody as white as you and me."

She attempted to smile, feeling that it was expected of her; but the
result was hardly proportionate to the effort. Her features were not
of that type which lends itself easily to disguises. A simple maidenly
soul, if the whole infinite variety of human masks had been at its
disposal, would have chosen just such a countenance as this as it