n it; he seemed to consider and decide
something about her. "There's a farmhouse about a mile back; I'm going
to take you over there and leave you with those people."

"I will not go there!"

He swore. "I'll carry you then!"

She shrank back from him as he lurched toward her with hands
outstretched to seize her; he followed her, and she avoided him again;
if his guilt and terror had given her mental ascendency over him, his
physical strength could still force her to his will and, realizing the
impossibility of evading him or overcoming him, she stopped.

"Not that!" she cried. "Don't touch me!"

"Come with me then!" he commanded; and he went to the door and laid his
snowshoes on the snow and stepped into them, stooping and tightening
the straps; he stood by while she put on hers. He did not attempt
again to put hands upon her as they moved away from the little cabin
toward the woods back of the clearing; but went ahead, breaking the
trail for her with his snowshoes. He moved forward slowly; he could
travel, if he had wished, three feet to every two that she could cover,
but he seemed not wishing for speed but rather for delay. They reached
the trees; the hemlock and pine, black and swaying, shifted their
shadows on the moonlit snow; bare maples and beeches, bent by the gale,
creaked and cracked; now the hemlock was heavier. The wind, which
wailed among the branches of the maples, hissed loudly in the needles
of the hemlocks; snow swept from the slopes and whirled and drove about
them, and she sucked it in with her breath. All through the wood were
noises; a moaning came from a dark copse of pine and hemlock to their
right, rose and died away; a wail followed--a whining, whimpering
wail--so like the crying of a child that it startled her. Shadows
seemed to detach themselves, as the trees swayed, to tumble from the
boughs and scurry over the snow; they hid, as one looked at them, then
darted on and hid behind the tree trunks.

Henry was barely moving; now he slowed still more. A deep, dull
resonance was booming above the wood; it boomed again and ran into a
rhythm. No longer was it above; at least it was not only above; it was
all about them--here, there, to right and to left, before, behind--the
booming of the Drum. Doom was the substance of that sound of the Drum
beating the roll of the dead. Could there be abiding in the wood a
consciousness which counted that roll? Constance fought the mad
feeling