The interlude had come happily. There is a healthful sanity in a child’s company, even if it endure but a brief space. Peregrine felt his mind somewhat cleansed of the murkiness which had enshrouded it. He began to picture the woman he sought as present with him. This eased his mind for a while, even though it tantalized. It lifted him to a more exalted mood. He identified her with the Spirit of Life around him, saw her passing over the snow swift-footed, fancied her coming from among the pines towards him, heard her voice in the light breeze which stirred them. He held her thus in his thought throughout the day. He saw her image in the glowing sunset, fancied the purpling light across the hills the spreading of her veil. So far so good. With the night, fatigue descended on him. There comes a point in this state when fancy cannot readily be embraced, nor even held though formerly present. Reality is required upon which to rest the mind. This Peregrine had not. Fancy slipping from him left him desolate. He was also very hungry. Fate had thrown no dwelling in his path whereat he could beg bread. Therefore he had not broken his fast since early morning. The needs of nature joining with desolation of mind to bear him down, he found himself heavily weighted. Darkness lay around him. The sky, which at close of sunset had clouded, brought very meagre light to guide him. Only the faint glimmer of the white road before him gave him his route. He stumbled on, sinking at times knee deep in the snow, where it lay drifted beneath the wall. The wind began to rise, and with it feathery flakes came silent and insidious. They touched his cheek like soft cold kisses. You would never have dreamed danger in their tenderness. They came faster, thicker. The wind swirled them in a dancing maze. A few steps further, and a blizzard was upon him. The wind rushing from the north smote him that he could barely stand. The snow leaped and flashed around him, blinding, suffocating. He staggered on doggedly. “An’ I stop now I never find her.” That was his thought, barely articulate even to his own mind. In his stress forgotten habit came to him. A prayer rose to his lips. He put it swift aside. Long ago he had prayed, believed in prayer, in God, in a woman he had created,—a woman who had prayed. She had mocked at him; cast him from her. Therefore he had put her and her beliefs from him, and with them his own, being like to hers. In this you see sheer stupidity, and rightly. The Creator is not responsible for hypocrisy in His creatures. That is where the Devil comes in with his handling of matters. This Peregrine had not seen formerly, nor was like to do so now, blinded and stupefied as he was by his conflict with the snow.