Up the tawny valley a bleak December wind swept, making a cheerless rattle among the naked trees, and the creek slumbered quietly beneath its covering of ice; but this time no children came over the frozen turnpike to the house at the foot of the hill. More secluded than ever it seemed. Before the bitter winds had risen, in the pleasant November days, Franz had often rambled through the woods, carrying the little Alice, when she felt tired, in his arms. But, as the air grew chill, they staid almost wholly within the house. After that Franz rarely left it except when his duties as organist called him to the church, and then he invariably took the little girl with him, wrapped carefully in a heavy cloak. The people noticed that he was never seen any where without the child. If the weather proved bad on the Sabbath, or on the days when he went sometimes during the week to play, he still carried her with him, but an additional fur mantle was thrown around her for protection. She had never grown stronger; but, since that first night, when the organist had broken down the great barrier of grief that was closing up like a strong wall about her heart, they were seldom separated in her waking hours. During all this time Franz had changed so strangely that the village gossips said one would hardly have known him for the same person. To be sure, he had always been silent and reserved, but now he had become absolutely inapproachable. His manner, which was naturally abrupt, was often now wild and feverish. His face, too, had grown thin, his cheeks hollow, his whole figure gaunt. His eyes, brilliant but sunken, had assumed a singular expression of unrest, a perpetually searching look, as if forever striving to see the invisible, and it began finally to be whispered about among the people that the church-organist was not quite right in his head. They noticed, besides, that he would never allow the child to be enticed out of his sight. The ladies often tried to pet her, but she shrank invariably from every one except Franz, to whom she clung as if he were the one prop that sustained her life.