CHAPTER VIII.
LIFE'S NIGHT WATCH.
It was a dull, wintry day; blank, ashen sky
above—grassland, sere and stark, below. Weedy
stubble wore shrouding of black; everything was
still—so still, even the birds yet drowsed upon their
perch, nor stirred a wing or throat to enliven the
depressing wood. A soiled and sullen snowdrift lay
dankly by a road that had fallen into disuse. It was
crossed now for the first time, maybe, in a full year.
A young woman tramped her way along the silent
waste to a log shanty. Frozen drifts of the late
snow lay packed as they had fallen on the door sill.
She rapped at the door and bent her head to listen; then she rattled it vigorously, and still no answer. She tried the latch, it yielded, and she entered. The light inside was so dim that it was hard at first to make out what was about her. Two hickory logs lay smouldering in a bank of ashes. She stirred the poor excuse for fire, and put on some smaller sticks that lay by the wide fireplace. By this time her eyes had become accustomed to the dimness, and she looked about her. There
