THE tumult in Ethel's soul swept about her grandfather and about Barney Loutrelle. She could see her grandfather again as first she saw him yesterday, hiding behind a tree, watching her friend start off toward the Rock.
"Ah, j'y étais mousquetaire!"
She seemed to hear the echo as Barney Loutrelle went off singing,—his warm voice full with the joy and goodness of living. He had been singing to himself because he was happy and stirred, and he had been still singing, perhaps, when he had passed out over this stretch of ice. And where was he now? Chill barbs of terror thrust within her; she seemed, strangely, to see his hands which yesterday she had liked to watch while he held them before their fire in the cabin; but now she saw them clenched and cold against the sand of the lake bottom. Her thoughts played horrible tricks against her attempts not to imagine him. Where was his ring, she wondered. Had they—the merciless, impersonal "they" whom she pictured as doing what had been done—had they taken away his ring or left it in his pocket? His mother's ring, so he had thought, which went so marvelously with that extraordinary old room restored on Resurrection Rock.
