them; then your grandfather and other young men came and turned the wood into gold and people said—people said—"
She stopped with a hiccough. "No one, Debsie, can ever go through life without doing wrongs to somebody, do you think? And if a great man does great things, are only the ordinary little wrongs of the tiny to be forgiven him?"
A tear fell from her eye, and she turned to the door which her husband had reopened.
"Come in, Sarah," he bade, and she obeyed.
Ethel felt queerly hollow as she went down the steps with Barney Loutrelle. Her grandmother did not know what had been done just last night, she assured herself, when she weakened. Her grandmother was thinking of that something—greater than a little wrong—which she admitted had been done long ago and which had brought about the break with Ethel's mother; now there was something more. This seemed to be a consequence of the other wrong which had arisen out of conditions long ago in the vanished forests of the tall trees; somehow it had taken in Resurrection Rock with its old French salon in the newly built house and Barney Loutrelle and his ring and the person—yet unknown—who had gone to the Rock last night and been killed.
Ethel was walking, side by side with Barney, in the wide ruts which the wood sled had made in the snow; they were both without skis for, without further discussion, they understood that they were to stop for conference in the first suitable building of the deserted village; so when the old store offered its sound roof and walls and windows, they entered. The floor was covered with light drift snow, and Ethel put her hand
