Hugh had a sudden rapid memory of two figures he had seen that first day he walked through the streets of Rudolm, a swift, silent Indian striding ahead and behind him his wife bearing just such a load as this on her bent shoulders and by the deerskin strap across her forehead. Yet he did not speak of the thought in his mind, it was far too fantastic and impossible.
They dined like lords that day, but spent most of the time still hugging the fire, for the cold was as fierce as had been the storm that went before it. The sun shone brilliantly, turning everything to diamond and silver and making their little world, as they looked out upon it, a strange and unfamiliar place. Jasper Peak opposite was sheathed in white from base to summit, with high-banked drifts and curving blue-shadowed hollows. The lake’s surface was blue again, an odd clear greenish blue, for it was ice. During the tumult of the storm it could not freeze over, but now was a glistening expanse, with white broken rifts here and there, where the floating masses of ice had been caught and frozen in. The long
