oulder,
pulling at the side of the dog, who toiled on briskly. When they
reached the tote-road it seemed rougher than ever and the country
wilder. To her right Madge could see the river that was nothing but a
winding jumble of snow-capped rocks and grinding ice, with here and
there patches of inky-looking water, where the ice-crust had split
asunder. Also she dully noted places where the water seemed to froth
up over the surface, boiling in great suds from which rose, straight
up in the still air, a cloud of heavy gray vapor. The cold felt even
more intense than earlier in the day. It impressed the girl as if some
tremendous force were bearing down mightily upon the world and holding
it in thrall. With the lowering of the sun the shadows had grown
longer. After a time the slight sound of the man's snowshoes over the
crackling snow, of the scraping toboggan, of the panting dog, began to
seem to Madge like some sort of desecration of a stillness in which
man was nothing and only an eternal and vengeful power reigned
supreme. In spite of the patches of sunlight filtering down through
branches or glaring upon the river there was now something dismal in
all this, and she began to feel the cold again, penetrating,
relentless, evil in its might.

They had gone about half way when, on the top of a slight rise, both
dog and man stopped for a moment's rest. The latter looked quite
exhausted. His face was set hard, in an expression she could not
fathom.

"Really, I think I could walk," said the girl again. "There--there's
no reason you should work so hard for me. And--and you look terribly
tired."

"Oh, no!" he disclaimed, hastily. "I--I could pull you all by myself
if--well, it's only a short distance away now, and Maigan is doing
nearly all the work, anyway. I--I don't think anything I can do for
you can quite make up for all that you seem to have gone through."

He looked at her, very gravely, as he sat down upon a fallen log,
close at hand, after clearing off some snow with a sweep of his mitt.
There was something very sad, she thought, an expression of pain upon
his face which she noted and which led her into a very natural error.
She was compelled to consider these things as evidences of regret, of
a conscience that was beginning to irk him badly. Her head bent down
till she was staring into her lap; she felt that tears were once more
dangerously near.

No thought came to her of appealing to this man, of suing for pit