“My wife will sure take your girl and welcome; don’t even have to ask her,” the kind-eyed old fellow assured Hilliard.  “We’ll be glad to have her for a couple of months.  She’ll like the kids.  It’ll be home for her.  Yes, sir”—­he patted the excited traveler on the shoulder—­“you pile into the stage and don’t you worry any.  I’ll be up at your place before night and bring the lady down on my sled.  Yes, sir.  Pile in and don’t you worry any.”

Cosme wrung his hand, avoided his clear eye, and climbed up beside the driver on the stage.  He did not look after the trapper.  He stared ahead beyond the horses to the high white hill against a low and heavy sky of clouds.

“There’s a big snowstorm a comin’ down,” growled the driver.  “Lucky if we make The Hill to-day.  A reg’lar oldtimer it’s agoin’ to be.  And cold—­ugh!”

Cosme hardly heard this speech.  The gray world was a golden ball for him to spin at his will.  Midas had touched the snow.  The sleigh started with a jerk and a jingle.  In a moment it was running lightly with a crisp, cutting noise.  Cosme’s thoughts outran it, leaping toward their gaudy goal ... a journey out to life and a journey back to love—­no wonder his golden eyes shone and his cheeks flushed.

“You look almighty glad to be going out of here,” the driver made comment.

Hilliard laughed an explosive and excited laugh.  “No almighty gladder than I shall be to be coming back again,” he prophesied.

But to prophesy is a mistake.  One should leave the future humbly on the knees of the gods.  That night, when Hilliard was lying wakeful in his berth listening to the click of rails, the old trapper lay under the driving snow.  But he was not wakeful.  He slept with no visions of gold or love, a frozen and untroubled sleep.  He had caught his foot in a trap, and the blizzard had found him there and had taken mercy on his pain.  They did not find his body until spring, and then Cosme’s letter to Sheila lay wet and withered in his pocket.

CHAPTER XIII

LONELINESS

The first misery of loneliness takes the form of a restless inability to concentrate.  It is as if the victim wanted to escape from himself.  After Cosme’s departure Sheila prowled about the silent cabin, began this bit of work and that, dropped it, found herself staring vaguely, listening, waiting, and nervously shook herself into activity again.  She tried to whistle, but it seemed like somebody else’s music and frightened her ears.  At dusk she fastened sacking across the uncurtained windows, lighted both Cosme’s lamps, bringing the second from her bedroom, and heaped up a dancing and jubilant fire upon the hearth.  In the midst of this illumination she sat, very stiff and still, in the angular elk-hide-covered chair, and knitted her hands together on her knee.  Her mind was now intensely active; memories, thoughts, plans, fancies racing fast and furious like screen pictures across her brain.  And they seemed to describe themselves in loud whispers.  She had difficulty in keeping these voices from taking possession of her tongue.