When she had read that letter over, she was wholly unsatisfied with it. Written words are apt to mean so much more or so much less than is intended. She put it aside and took up the one to Kilgariff. As she read it, it seemed even more unsatisfactory than the first. “It is too humble in parts, and too proud in parts,” she thought. Again she set to work and wrote both letters once more. The result was worse than before. The letters seemed to ring with a false note, and above all things she was determined to meet this crisis in her life with absolute truth and candour. Besides, she not only wanted to utter her thought to Kilgariff—she wanted to hear what he might have to say in reply, and she wanted to see his face as he spoke, reading there far more important things than any that he could put into a letter. Suddenly she realised that she was very cold. The weather was growing severe now, and in her preoccupation she had neglected her fire until it had burned down to a mass of slowly expiring coals. Then she recovered her courage. “I have been trying the cowardly way,” she said aloud, but speaking only to herself. “I must face these things bravely. I’ve been planning to run away again, and I will not do that. I’ve been running away all my life. I’ll never run away again. I’ll go to Wyanoke in the morning.” With that, she gathered all the sheets on which she had written and dropped them upon the few coals which remained alive. The paper smouldered and smoked for a time. Then it broke into a flame and was quickly consumed. The girl prepared herself for bed, with a degree of composure which she had not been able to command at any time since the knowledge of Kilgariff’s act had come to her. When she blew out her candle and opened the window, a gust of snow was blown into her face, and she heard the howling of the tempest without. “It is the first storm of the winter,” she thought, as she drew the draperies about her. “How those poor fellows must be suffering down there in the trenches at Petersburg to-night—half clad, and less than half fed!” Then, as she was sinking into sleep, she thought:— “I’m glad Mr. Kilgariff is not there to-night.” The thought startled her into wakefulness again, and during the remaining hours of the night she lay sleeplessly thinking, thinking, thinking. XXX BEFORE A HICKORY FIRE EVELYN’S thinking accomplished its purpose. At the end of it she understood herself, or thought she did. And when she returned to Wyanoke the next morning, she thought she knew precisely what she was going to say to Kilgariff. But who of us ever knows what we will say in converse that involves emotion? Who of us can know what response his utterance will draw forth from the other, or how far the original intent may be turned into another by that response? At any rate, Evelyn knew that she intended to ask Colonel Kilgariff for an interview, and so far she carried out her purpose.