The door opened, and she found herself looking into the face of Rance Belmont, and her fear-tortured eyes gave him a glad welcome.

She seized him by the arm, holding to him as a child fear-smitten in the night will hold fast to the one who comes in answer to his cries.

Rance Belmont knew how to make the most, yet not too much, of an advantage.  He soothed her fears courteously, gently; he built up the fire; he made her a cup of tea; there was that strange and subtle influence in all that he said and did that made her forget everything that was unpleasant and be happy in his presence.

A perfect content grew upon her; she forgot her fears—­her loneliness—­ her quarrel with Fred; she remembered only the happy company of the present.

Under the intoxication of the man’s presence she ceased to be the tired, discouraged, irritable woman, and became once more the Evelyn Grant whose vivacity and wit had made her conspicuous in the brightest company.

She tried to remind herself of some of the unpleasant things that neighborhood gossip said of Rance Belmont—­of Mrs. Corbett’s dislike of him—­but in the charm of his presence they all faded into vague unrealities.

There was flattery, clever, hidden flattery, which seemed like adoration, in every word he spoke, every tone of his voice, every glance of his coal-black eyes, that seemed in some way to atone for the long, gray, monotonous days that had weighed so heavily upon her spirits.

“Are you always frightened when you are left alone?” he asked her.  Every word was a caress, the tone of his voice implying that she should never be left alone, the magnetism of his presence assuring her that she would never be left alone again.

“I was never left alone in the evening before,” she said.  “I thought I was very brave until to-night, but it was horrible—­it makes me shudder to think of it.”

“Don’t think!” he said gently.

“Fred thought the twins would be here, I know, or he would not have stayed away,” Evelyn said, wishing to do justice to Fred, and feeling indefinitely guilty about something.

“The twins are jolly good company,—­oh, I say!” laughed Rance, in tones so like her brothers-in-law that Evelyn laughed delightedly.  It was lovely to have someone to laugh with.

“But where are the heavenly twins to-night?”

“I suppose they saw a flock of ducks going over, or heard the honk-honk of wild geese,” she answered.  “It does not take much to distract them from labor—­and they have a soul above it, you know.”

Rance Belmont need not have asked her about the twins; he had met them on their way to the Plover Slough and had given Reginald the loan of his gun; he had learned from them that Fred, too, was away.

“But if dear Aunt Patience will only lift her anchor all will yet be well, and the dear twins will not need to be bothered with anything so beastly as farm-work.”  His tone and manner were so like the twins that Evelyn applauded his efforts.  Then he told her the story of the cow, and of how the twins, endeavoring to follow the example of some of the Canadians whom they had seen locking their wagon-wheels with a chain when going down the Souris hill, had made a slight mistake in the location of the chain and hobbled the oxen, with disastrous results.