He was in the glow of this new resolve when he climbed the hill to the south of the college and turned to follow the road along the ridge which Felicity and Emmet had taken that misty night. At the quarry he paused for a few moments to look down absently at the men working below, and then began to retrace his steps toward the Hall. His turning brought the tower of the college and the distant city before his eyes. The absence of foliage from the trees exposed to view innumerable glinting roofs that were hidden in summer as by a forest. He picked out the tower of St. George's Church and the various steeples with which he had become familiar. Then he caught sight of the pale wings of the figure of Victory above the triumphal column in the park, poised like those of a butterfly about to soar into the still, bright air. Once more the beauty of the country made its great appeal: the magnificent valleys to east and west swelling upward to ridges of hills clothed in ever changing lights and shadows; the Hall standing sentinel over all; the city nestled below, a city of dreams. CHAPTER XX "PUNISHMENT, THOUGH LAME OF FOOT"---- The bishop sat in his study, awaiting the arrival of Mayor Emmet in a frame of mind that boded ill for the success of the interview. In reply to his letter suggesting a conference on a subject of mutual interest, the mayor had named the third morning as the one that would find him most free from his numerous engagements. The coolness of this reply was exasperating to the bishop, and he thought he divined in the delay a deliberate intention to keep him on the rack of uncertainty. Being a man of ample leisure, he had found plenty of time to formulate the position he meant to take. He and his daughter had threshed out the subject, and now avoided it by mutual consent. Their relationship became unnatural and constrained. They met only at meal-times, and not always then, for each one sought more than one pretext to dine elsewhere. More words on the subject would only precipitate a repetition of the scene that still rankled in the memory of both, and the discussion was therefore closed until Emmet should have stated his own position. While the situation remained thus stationary, the appearance of the world without had been so completely transformed that a whole season, rather than three days, seemed to have elapsed. Winter had returned in a storm of snow that threatened to assume the proportions of the historic blizzard, which piled such deep drifts about St. George's Hall that the students had leaped with impunity from the upper windows. During the previous night, however, the sky had cleared, and now the air was filled with those familiar brumal sounds, the scraping of shovels and the ringing of sleighbells, that usually make such a pleasant appeal to those within-doors; but the bishop was merely moved to impatient longing for the spring.