With night came tears. Ah, for one word, a sign or token; if any one could send a word back, surely it would be the father to his “heart child.” She lighted candles and grouped them on mantel-shelf and stand, but their light was pale compared to that of the moon. Then she stole away outside the door for rest that must be had. How long she slept she did not know, but awakening with beating heart at a dream that was half reality, she thought she heard a rustling in the great room: opening the door, she saw a snowbird circling about, gray and white, against the moonlight, and even as she looked, it lighted on the rail above her father’s head and settled to sleep, head under wing. “The open window,” whispered Rosalind, and peace filled her heart. * * * * * Among all those who came to sympathize by word or deed in the three days that followed, one face was missed; Rosalind wondered at it, and then questioned her own disappointment as the days went by, each tense with readjustment, not knowing that absent on a journey at first, he had in tenderness dreaded to push into a house of mourning. At last one day, a man, whose resolute yet self-restrained face was unfamiliar in the village, came slowly up the street, pausing afar off to look at the house that from his point of view only showed closed shutters. Presently he walked slowly on, and as he passed the gate, turned quickly as for a last look at a place where he did not dare intrude. In the open window of the sunlit half sat Rosalind, dressed in white, a flower at her throat, an open book before her, while on her sweet human face rested the reflected light as from another world. Then the man took courage, and, turning back, he knocked at the white door. XI THE RAT-CATCHER =NOVEMBER=—THE MAGIC MOON When Black Frost comes to the lowlands, he sometimes loiters for many nights along the river meadows, and sometimes climbs swiftly into the hill country, Wabeno the Magician always following in his wake cloaked in the golden haze of dreams called Indian Summer.