“My feet are cold,” he said slowly. “I shouldn't like to freeze them.” She drew back and let him in, left him to find a chair and put his feet against the stove. She sat down near the window and went on knitting. The knitting needles glittered and clicked. Her face was outlined against the gray window, the flakes too glittered and clicked. It looked silent, secret, repressed, as seen against the gray window; like something chilled and snowed under, cold and sweet, smooth pale hair and forehead, deep bosom and slender waist. She looked young enough to be called in the early June of her years. “There's good proportion and feature, but not enough nerves for a thoroughbred. But,” he thought, “she looks as if she needed, as you might say, revelry,” and he spoke aloud. “Once I was in this section and there was a man named Sebastian lived here, or maybe it was farther on.” She said, “It was here” in a low voice. “David Sebastian now, that was it, or something that way. Stiff, sort of grim old--oh, but you might be a relative, you see. Likely enough. So you might.” “I might be.” “Just so. You might be.” He rubbed his hands and leaned back, staring at the window. The wind was rising outside and blew the snow in whirls and sheets. “Going to be a bad night I came up from the station. If a man's going anywhere tonight, he'll be apt not to get there.” “You ought to have taken the right hand at the fork.” “Well, I don't know.” She rose and took a cloak from the table. Sebastian watched her. “I must feed the pony and shut up the chickens.” She hesitated. A refusal seemed to have been hinted to the hinted request for hospitality. But Sebastian saw another point. “Now, that's what I'm going to do for you.” She looked on silently, as he passed her with assured step, not hesitating at doors, but through the kitchen to the woodshed, and there in the darkness of a pitch-black corner took down a jingling lantern and lit it. She followed him silently into the yard, that was full of drifts and wild storm, to the barn, where she listened to him shake down hay and bedding, measure oats, slap the pony's flank and chirp cheerfully. Then he plunged through a low door and she heard the bolt in the chicken shed rattle. It had grown dark outside. He came out and held the barn door, waiting for her to step out, and they stood side by side on the edge of the storm. “How did you know the lantern was there?” “Lantern! Oh, farmhouses always keep the lantern in the nearest corner of the woodshed, if it isn't behind the kitchen door.” But she did not move to let him close the bam. He looked down at her a moment and then out at the white raging night. “Can't see forty feet, can you? But, of course, if you don't want to give me a roof I'll have to take my chances. Look poor, don't they? Going to let me shut this door?” “I am quite alone here.” “So am I. That's the trouble.”