Sally moved westward, believing Tahawus cabin lay toward the west. But darkness came at length and she grew more bewildered. Moreover, she was nearly frozen. Now and then she would pause to wave her arms and stamp her feet, smiling at herself meanwhile, a half frozen, childish smile. In her fur coat with her waving arms, so stiff they moved with difficulty, she must have looked like an animated bear had anyone seen her in the dusk. Several times Sally stumbled and fell forward, only to pick herself up and go steadfastly on. She had no fear of wild animals, most of them were vanished from the Adirondack forest; nor of the darkness was she afraid; she was fearful of but two things, the cold and the silence. Moreover, always before her appeared the picture of the gleaming fireplace at the cabin. Once she put out her hands as if she would warm them before it. Again she felt her father’s arms about her and her head dropping half asleep against his shoulder. Then Sally aroused herself more completely, appreciating that drowsiness must be fought above all other sensations, if one would conquer the peril of freezing. Twice Sally was under the impression that she saw a tall figure approaching and called Dan Webster’s name, only to find later that the figure she had hoped might be human was a low tree with a pair of forked arms. [Illustration: Sally’s Hands Beat Against the Closed Door] Toward the latter part of her journeying she had no impressions, almost no consciousness, yet something must have guided her—instinct, sub-conscious mind, call it what you will. A light drew her, as a light has drawn all wanderers on the face of the earth. Rising on the peak of a low hill appeared a fairy palace with only the towers visible as if built upon air, but nearer, almost beside her, a small, uncertain light. Sally’s hands beat against the closed door of a small, one-room house. The face of the man who opened the door she had a faint impression of having seen before, but afterwards she remembered nothing but her own effort to reach the fire and the man restraining her. CHAPTER XIV Christmas Eve “Then you really did care, Dan, when you feared I was lost and that something tragic may have happened?” “I always intended to find you, Sally.” Yet Dan Webster looked troubled. He was standing staring down at the girl who was sitting wrapped in a white woolen cape before the log fire at Tahawus cabin. Somehow Sally Ashton appeared several years younger than before her adventure. She was paler, the lines of her face thinner and there was a little downward droop to the corners of her full lips. “And yet in a way I did not find you after all! I was merely tramping through the woods calling your name when by accident I saw a figure moving toward me, the man whose little cabin you had stumbled into. Fate was kinder to you than you dream, Sally. Mr. Holden was on his way to your friends.”