showed no footmarks. She was fearfully expecting that Lad was leading her to the sort of horror which she had believed to be in the house when she came upon chunks of ice standing beside a hole, about a yard in diameter, which had been chopped through to the water.
Young ice had frozen over, not yet half an inch thick. She knelt and leaned forward with her hands on the edge of the hole, peering down through the new, glassy crystal into the dark, deep water underneath. She felt footsteps on the floor of ice and, looking about, she saw that Asa after some delay had descended from the Rock. He came to her side and gazed into the hole.
"Water hole," he said quietly. "Bagley chop it here yesterday to fill buckets. Bagley did not chop it, I think, so big."
"Why did the dogs want us to come out here, Asa?" she demanded, still on her knees.
Redbird stared at her for an instant; and she was aware that the action of the dogs in the house had banished from him the fright of the supernatural which had seized him.
"For drink, maybe," he suggested.
"You think that?"
Asa for answer thrust a foot forward and with his heel broke the young ice. "You drink, Lad? Lass?" he invited.
Lass did not move, and Lad thrust his nose down only to sniff unsatisfactorily, and lift his head again. "They want no drink," Redbird said. "What you think?"
She stood up, but she could not speak to the Indian the words for what she thought. She moved
