slowly, head inclined and attempting to see through the heavy ice; but nothing but the blackness of water rewarded her. The Rock rose so abruptly from the lake bottom that the water was twenty or thirty feet deep.
"Who chopped that hole bigger, do you suppose, Asa?" she appealed at last of the Indian who had not joined her in her vain walking about, but who was standing, looking away over the ice.
Redbird refused to commit himself.
"Would Mr. Loutrelle have made it larger?" she asked.
"Why?" Asa returned.
"Yes; that's it; why? Why, Asa?" she cried, suddenly losing control of herself. "Why should any one want that hole bigger?"
"Nobody would," Redbird assured positively, "for water."
"No," she said. "No; no; no!" She meant, first, agreement with Asa; then revolt at, and denial of, the images in her own mind. The Indian and she now understood the same events alike; Asa, indeed, had discovered more than she.
"What kept you up there?" she asked him.
He said he would show her; and together they ascended the steps in the Rock. He had blocked the door so it had not latched and locked them out; so now, shutting out the dogs, he led her to the part of the floor where the dogs had been sniffing.
"Somebody washed right here, you see. Somebody did it last night, I think; somebody scrubbed. But no place else."
He fell to one knee, placing his face close to the floor and shutting one eye to glance with the other
