In the morning the Cub hastened to the barn. Either the old-fashioned latch had sprung up, or some one had been there before him, for the little fox, having eaten every scrap of food, and thereby gained strength, had gone his way, which, according to the string of footprints, was up in the rock and hemlock country behind the farm. Yet after supper on that night, and all the others that came before the spring thawing, a woman’s figure, wearing a cape under which was concealed a dish of scraps, outwitting Tatters, slipped from the pantry door, and going around the barn, halted at a flat rock set in a group of hemlocks, presently returning with the empty platter, her face wearing as rapt an expression as that of some pious woman of old carrying food to the haunts of hermit or saint of the pillar. February, as if sick of its dreary self, suddenly fell away before March’s vigour, and its first gusty mood had softened before Brooke and Adam realized themselves at least the sole guardians of their parents and the homestead; yet in spite of this and the work it entailed, the Cub managed to spend at least a couple of hours a day with Stead at the lodge on Windy Hill, and Brooke tried to snatch a little time for painting, but even with her mother’s help her toil was by far more constant and exacting than her brother’s. However, direct motive had come to both of them, and that alone can make one walk sure-footed on the tight rope which at intervals through life replaces a safe path. Brooke worked persistently, using Tatters, Pam, and Robert Stead’s hunting dogs as studies, conscious of crudeness, imperfections, and the need of criticism, but letting nothing quench her spirit as long as the spark of vitality flashed back at her. She longed for the warm weather to come, so that she might work outdoors, and use as a studio an old hay-thatched shed on the hillside, once a sheepfold, which opened northeast toward the river valley. At this juncture Robert Stead, whose technical training and passionate love of nature and animal life gave his words more than a casual value, stepped in, both as encourager and critic, and Brooke eagerly promised to try a picture of Manfred,—“a serious order,” Stead called it,—as soon as the season would permit. Meantime he brought her books and studies of animal anatomy, of whose cost she little guessed, and in explaining the details to her forgot both his warp and himself, becoming for the time that most enthralling of beings, the man of middle age who blends all the directness and fervour of youth with the subtle and reassuring charm of matured experience.