One night I lay awake, pinching myself to stave off sleep. It was winter. Outside I could hear the trees cracking beneath the weight of snow upon their boughs. The servants came to bed. I saw them pass my door, casting long shadows, screening their candles with their hands lest the light should strike across my eyes and rouse me. I waited to hear the study-door open and close. In waiting I began to drowse. I came to myself with a shudder. What hour it was I could not guess. I got out of bed. Stealing to the top of the stairs I looked down; all was blackness. Listening, I could hear the heavy breathing of sleepers. Bare-footed, I crept down into the hall, clinging to the banisters. The air was bitter. I was frightened. Each step I took seemed to cause the house to groan and tremble. The door of the study stood open. By the light of the fire, dying in the grate, I could just make out the carpet. Darting across the threshold, I knelt upon it. “Take me to Mama,” I whispered. The minutes ticked by; it did not stir. I spoke again; nothing happened. I heard a sound in the doorway--a sudden catching of the breath. I turned. My father was standing, watching me. I did not scream or cry out. He came toward me through the darkness. What with fear of consequences and disappointment, I fell to sobbing. I think he must have seen and overheard everything, for, with a tenderness which had something hungry and awful about it, he gathered me in his arms. Without a word of question or explanation, he carried me up to bed. Before he left, he halted as though he were trying to utter some thought which refused to get said. Suddenly he bent above the pillow, just as my mother used to do, and kissed me on the forehead. His cheeks were salty. As my eyes closed, a strange thing happened. The snow lay on the ground and there were no flowers, but the room was filled with the fragrance of violets. CHAPTER III--THE SPUFFLER One day there was a ring at the door in the lane, followed by a loud and impatient rat-a-tat. A gentleman, who was a stranger to me, hurled himself across the threshold. He wore the frown of one who is intensely in earnest, whose mind is very much occupied. His mustaches were the fiercest and most eager that I ever saw on any man. They stuck out at right angles from under his nose like a pair of shaving-brushes. They were of an extraordinary purplish color, and would have done credit to a pirate. But his dress was more clerical than sea-faring. It consisted of a black frock coat, bound with braid at the edges where the cloth was fretted; his vest was low-cut to display an ocean of white shirt, above which a small tie of black silk wobbled. Hurrying up the path, tugging at his bushy eye-brows, he disappeared into the house. The last I saw of him was a red bandana handkerchief, streaming like a danger-signal from his coat-tail pocket. I thought he must be one of those hostile publishers my father talked about or, at the very least, an editor.