The distance was not great, and they walked with rapid footsteps over the crisp and frozen ground. Around the cabin, the snow formed a thick carpet, which, lying in shade, had not been glazed, like the general surface of the landscape. Their steps did not resound on this white covering, and instead of crossing the stile in front of the cabin, they vaulted over the fence and approached the door by a side path. The moment Arthur laid his hand upon the latch he knew some one had entered the house during his absence, for he had closed the door, and now it was ajar. With one bound he cleared the passage, and Mr. Mason, who was a tall and strong man, was not left much in the rear. The inner door was not latched, and opened at the touch. The current of air which rushed in with their sudden entrance rolled into the chimney, and the fire flashed up and roared, illuminating every object within. Near the centre of the room stood a man, wrapped in a dark cloak that completely concealed his figure, a dark mask covering his face, and a fur cap pulled deep over his forehead. He stood by the side of Miss Thusa's wheel, which presented the appearance of a ruin, with its brazen bands wrenched asunder, and its fragments strewed upon the floor. He was evidently arrested in the act of destruction, for one hand grasped the distaff, the other clinched something which he sought to conceal in the folds of his cloak. Miss Thusa, partly raised on her elbow, which shook and trembled from the weight it supported, was gazing with impotent despair on her dismembered wheel. A dim fire quivered in her sunken eyes, and her sharpened and prominent features were made still more ghastly by the opaque frame-work of white linen that surrounded them. She was uttering faint and broken ejaculations. "Monster--robber!--my treasure! Take the gold--take it, but spare my wheel! Poor Helen! I gave it to her! Poor child! It's she you are robbing, not me! Oh, my God! my heart-strings are breaking! My wheel, that I loved like a human being! Lord, Lord, have mercy upon me!"