stepped quietly out and was soon breaking through the drifts which lay
between the cottage and the park.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE WOMAN.

They slept later than usual at the park house that morning, and Frank
and his family were just sitting down to breakfast, and Arthur was
taking his rolls and coffee in his own room, when John, with a white,
scared face, looked in and said:

'Excuse me, Mr. Tracy, but--but something dreadful has happened. There's
a woman frozen to death in the Tramp House, with a baby, and Harold
Hastings found them, and--but he is here, sir; he will tell you
himself;' and he went for the boy, who soon entered the room, followed
by every servant in the house.

Harold had come upon John first in the stable, and sinking down
exhausted upon the hay, had told his story, while the man, John,
listened terror-stricken and open-mouthed. Then seeing how weak and
tired Harold seemed, and how he sank back upon the hay when he attempted
to rise, he took him in his arms, and carrying him to the kitchen, left
him there while he went with the news to his master.

'A woman dead in the Tramp House, and a baby!' Frank exclaimed, and for
an instant he felt as if he were dying, for there flashed over him a
conviction that the woman had come in the train the previous night, and
that it was her cry for help which had been borne to him on the winds,
and to which he had paid no heed.

'Are you sick? Are you going to faint?' his wife said to him, as she saw
how white he grew, and how heavily he leaned back in his chair as Harold
related the particulars of his finding the woman and the child.

'I am not going to faint; but it makes me sick and shaky to think of a
woman freezing to death so near us that if she had cried for help we
might perhaps have heard her,' Frank replied.

Then turning to Harold, he continued:

'How did she look? Was she young? Was she pretty? Was she dark or fair?'

He almost gasped the last word, as if it choked him, and no one guessed
how anxiously he waited for Harold's answer, which did not afford him
much relief.

'I don't know; it was so dark in there, and cold, and I was afraid some
of the time, and in a hurry. I only know that her nose was long and
large, for I touched it when I was trying to get at the little girl, and
it was so cold--oh, oh!'

And Harold shuddered as if he still felt the icy touch of the dead.

'A long nose and a large one,' Frank said, involuntarily, while a