It was between three and four o'clock in the afternoon of the same day, and the sun still shone dazzlingly on the deep, unblemished snow. All morning long, the janitors of the Hall had been toiling through the drifts with their shovels, leaving a narrow pathway behind them from the southern extremity of the building to the street at the end of the maple walk. Now, their heads and shoulders had ceased to rise and fall above the bleak expanse. Instead, a solitary figure could be seen advancing in the direction of the college, seeming from a distance to be that of a child, and reminding one of Little Red Riding-Hood in the fairy tale. The height of the side walls of snow aided the distance in producing this illusion. Upon coming nearer, one would have seen the child gradually assume the stature of a woman, and had he been a citizen of Warwick, he would have recognised Felicity Wycliffe. Although, as a general thing, women were not wont to pass that way, except to attend the chapel services of a Sunday or some public ceremony, the bishop's daughter was free of the grounds by peculiar rights, which no one dreamed of questioning. A group of students, meeting her halfway, leaped gallantly into the snow waist-deep to let her pass, and did not presume to question her mission or destination. The wind had already begun to sift the fine snow into the bottom of the trench, increasing the difficulty of her progress, and forming innumerable little rifts and scallops in the white dunes that swelled upward toward the skyline like the sands of the sea. Suddenly she heard the harsh cawing of a flock of crows that passed overhead, wheeling westward. The sound caused her heart to vibrate with a memory of that wonderful October afternoon when she had listened with Leigh to the same notes beneath the pines, and she shaded her eyes against the sun to watch the course of the flock across the wide basin of the valley. The notes grew less and less, no longer streperous but strangely musical, and finally were heard no more, leaving her oppressed by a sense of loneliness and desertion. Something akin to an antique mood fell upon her, as if she had been given an augury of an irreversible fate. This spiritual quiescence, numbing her from a realisation of her purpose, held until she disappeared into the huge archway of the tower and began to ascend the narrow stairs. But here her spirit failed her, and she paused. Standing motionless in the gloom, she could hear her heart beating wildly, and the folly of her intention became apparent. But the momentum of her original purpose presently urged her on, it seemed against her will and better judgement, until she stood before Leigh's half-open door. Had the door been closed, she might not have been able to bring herself to knock, she might have turned and departed as silently as she had come; but there was an invitation in this accidental circumstance, to which the gleam of an open fire gave warmth and persuasion.