“My dear, of course I am grieved and in a way angry. You have forced Mrs. Graham, whom I love better than most persons, to bear a sense of guilt and a burden of responsibility that was your’s and not her own. I have seldom seen Betty more worried and it has affected the pleasure of her winter with me which I desired to be especially happy. Yet the fact that you have committed the very fault you believed most foreign to you is not so unusual as you consider it, Gill dear. Life has a fashion of tricking us in our preconceived notions of ourselves. She has done the same thing to me and it is one of her bitterest lessons. Of course one has only to try to see that she does not succeed again. I wish you did not feel you were forced to leave the Camp Fire because of your fault. If membership in the Camp Fire demanded perfection I am afraid our number would not be large. You know it only demands an ideal and the effort of getting up and going on after a mistake or a downfall which brings one nearer the ultimate goal.” Gill had been silent for a few moments afterwards, seated on the floor beside her Camp Fire guardian in her bed-room. “Nevertheless, I think it would be best for me to return home,” she said finally, “although the girls also have been kind enough to urge me to remain. Beside my own feeling that I have in a measure betrayed the trust of the Camp Fire, of late I have received several letters from my father telling me that he was lonely and needed me. I have been too long away, but some day perhaps I shall be able to return and once more be a member of the Sunrise Camp Fire. Until then I hope you will not forget me.” So early in the new year Gill vanished from the household at Half Moon Lake and a month later Mrs. Graham departed. Afterwards the winter closed in about Tahawus cabin. The thermometer fell to ten, then twenty, then thirty degrees below zero. Very rarely now did the snow ever fall, only the ice packed thicker and deeper, the limbs of the trees laden with winter’s burdens now and then breaking, fell stiffly to the earth. The wind rarely blew with any fierceness and the cold was extraordinarily still. Actually the household felt the coldness less than any one of them anticipated. Rarely a day passed by but the greater number of them were out walking or skating or skiing. Frequently David Murray or one of the girls drove the sleigh to Saranac for provisions and mail. And as she grew stronger, Mrs. Burton was able to accompany them on their shorter excursions. Nevertheless, it was the long evenings at Half Moon Lake that the Sunrise Camp Fire ever hereafter was to recall as adding a peculiar value and interest to their winter in the Adirondacks. The darkness fell between half-past four and five o’clock, by six the final afterglow had departed from the crown of hills, and above them hung the stars or the pale winter moon.