"It is not an unusual complaint, especially when one is as pretty as you are," said Miss Schuyler. "Though I must confess I don't quite understand what you are afraid of, Hetty." "No?" said Hetty. "You never do seem to understand anything, Flo. If he goes to Muller's the homestead-boys, who are as fond of him as they are of poison, might shoot him, and he almost deserves it. No, of course, after what he is doing for us, I don't mean that. It is the meanness that is in me makes me look for faults in everybody. He was almost splendid--and he has left his furs for us--but he mayn't come back at all. Oh, it's horrible!" Hetty's voice grew indistinct, and Flora Schuyler drew the furs closer about them, and slipped an arm round her waist. She began to feel the cold again, and the loneliness more, while, even when she closed her eyes, she could not shut out the menacing darkness in front of her. Miss Schuyler was from the cities, and it was not her fault that, while she possessed sufficient courage of a kind, she shrank from the perils of the wilderness. She would have found silence trying, but the vague sounds outside, to which she could attach no meaning, were more difficult to bear. So she started when a puff of wind set the birch twigs rattling or something stirred the withered leaves, and once or twice a creaking branch sent a thrill of apprehension through her and she almost fancied that evil faces peered at her from the square gap of blackness. Now and then, a wisp of pungent smoke curled up and filled her eyes, and little by little she drew nearer to the fire with a physical craving for the warmth of it and an instinctive desire to be surrounded by its brightness, until Hetty shook her roughly by the arm. "Flo," she said, "you are making me almost as silly as you are, and that capote--it's the prettiest I have seen you put on--is burning. Sit still, or I'll pinch you--hard." Hetty's grip had a salutary effect, and Miss Schuyler, shaking off her vague terrors, smiled a trifle tremulously. "I wish you would," she said. "Your fingers are real, any way. I can't help being foolish, Hetty--and is the thing actually burning?" Hetty laughed. "I guessed that would rouse you--but it is," she said. "I have made my mind up, Flo. If he doesn't come in an hour or so, we'll go to Muller's, too." Miss Schuyler was by no means sure that this would please her, but she said nothing and once more there was a silence she found it difficult to bear.