Alas! the beacon would not light. The wind had turned icy cold and the rain changed to hail which hurled itself upon the tiny blaze and stifled its first breath. A sort of desperate patience fell on the man, and he began again, with utmost care, to build and shelter his little stock of firewood. Match after match he struck, and with unvarying failure, till all were gone; and realizing at last how chilled and rigid he was growing, he struggled to his feet and set them into motion. Then there came a momentary lull in the storm and he shouted aloud, as Angelique had done: “Margot! Little Margot! Margot!” Another gust swept over the lake and island. He could hear the great trees falling in the forest, the bang, bang, bang, of the deafening thunder, as, blinded by lightning and overcome by exhaustion, he sank down behind the pile of rocks and knew no more. CHAPTER II SPIRIT OR MORTAL? The end of that great storm was almost as sudden as its beginning. Aroused by the silence that succeeded the uproar, Angelique stood up and rubbed her limbs, stiff with long kneeling. The fire had gone out. Meroude was asleep on the blankets spread for Margot, who had not returned, nor the master. As for that matter, the house mistress had not expected that they ever would. “There is nothin’ left. I am alone. It was the glass. Ah! that the palsy had seized my unlucky hand before I took it from its shelf! How still it is. How clear, too, is my darling’s laugh--it rings through the room--it is a ghost. It will haunt me always, always.” Unable longer to bear the indoor silence, which her fancy filled with familiar sounds, she unbarred the heavy door and stepped out. “Ah! is it possible--can the sun be setting that way--as if there had been nothin’ happen?” Wrecks strewed the open ground about the cabin, poultry coops were washed away, the cow-shed was a heap of ruins, into which the trembling observer dared not peer. That Snowfoot should be dead was a calamity but second only to the loss of master and nursling. “Ah! my beast, my beauty. The best in all this northern Maine. That the master bought and brought in the big canoe for an Easter gift to his so faithful Angelique. And yet the sun sets as red and calm as if all were the same as ever.” It was, indeed, a scene of grandeur. The storm, in passing northward, had left scattered banks of clouds, now colored most brilliantly by the setting sun and widely reflected on the once more placid lake. But neither the beauty nor the sweet, rain-washed air, appealed to the distracted islander, who faced the west and shook her hand in impotent rage toward it. “Shine, will you? With the harm all done and nothin’ left but me, old Angelique. Pouf! I turn my back on you!”