of the message from her father and of the letter from London, but of her grandfather watching Resurrection Rock through his glass and of Kincheloe's return to her grandfather last night.
She heard scratching at the door and, remembering the dogs, she recalled the brown mat in Lad's hair and how Kincheloe that morning had twice attempted to take the dogs from her.
"Let them in, Asa," she directed.
When the door was opened and the dogs ran in, she thought that they rushed into the salon because she was there; but Lad only brushed against her on his way to the further end of the great room where he thrust his head down and smelled of the floor, whimpering and scrambling about in a circle. Lass blundered about near him so excitedly that Ethel followed to see what was there, only to find a space of bare, varnished floor. But her interest stirred Lad to leap upon her and dash to the door on the south which communicated with the outside steps down the Rock to the summer landing.
When she looked through the glass of this door, Ethel observed for the first time that those steps showed the depressions of deep footsteps, blunted and half filled with the lighter drift which had been blowing about since early morning. The door was locked and bolted but, upon being unfastened, readily opened.
The dogs jumped into the snow and floundered down the steps to the ice where they shook themselves and rolled over, barking. They ran out of sight about the base of the Rock; then they reappeared, barking and so plainly trying to lead that Ethel went down to them.
She found half-filled furrows in the snow which must have been made by the dogs some hours earlier; farther away from the Rock, the ice was smooth and
