thunder, as, blinded by lightning and overcome by exhaustion, he sank down behind the pile of rocks and knew no more.

[Pg 14]

[Pg 15]

[Pg 15]

CHAPTER II

SPIRIT OR MORTAL

The end of that great storm was almost as sudden as its beginning. Aroused by the silence that succeeded the uproar, Angelique stood up and rubbed her limbs, stiff with long kneeling. The fire had gone out. Meroude was asleep on the blankets spread for Margot, who had not returned, nor the master. As for that matter the house-mistress had not expected that they ever would.

The

“There is nothin’ left. I am alone. It was the glass. Ah! that the palsy had but seized my unlucky hand before I took it from its shelf! How still it is. How clear, too, is my darling’s laugh—it rings through the room—it is a ghost. It will haunt me al-ways, al-ways.”

Unable longer to bear the indoor silence, [Pg 16]which her fancy filled with familiar sounds, she unbarred the heavy door and stepped out.

[Pg 16]

“Ah! is it possible! Can the sun be settin’ that way? as if there had been nothin’ happenin’.”

Wrecks strewed the open ground about the cabin, poultry coops were washed away, the cow shed was a heap of ruins, into which the trembling observer dared not peer. That Snowfoot should be dead was a calamity but second only to the loss of master and nursling.

“Ah! my beast, my beast. The best in all this northern Maine. That the master bought and brought in the big canoe for an Easter gift to his so faithful Angelique. And yet the sun sets as red and calm as if all was the same as ever.”

It was, indeed, a scene of grandeur. The storm, in passing northward, had left scattered banks of clouds, now colored most brilliantly by the setting sun and widely reflected on the once more placid lake. But neither the beauty, nor the sweet, rain-washed air, 

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