the torn land lovely again at once, she wrapped it in a dazzling robe of spotless snow.  Above this she hurriedly hung the broken boughs of the wrecked cottonwoods with countless flashing prisms, encrusting the smallest twigs to the very top in sparkling crystal; and coming down she stilled the murmur of the reeds under icy helmets—­binding all together with crystalline cables of frost.  So that under the rainbow light of the brilliant winter sun the world was once more radiant with peace and joy and beauty unspeakable.

And Cedar House, too, was now just as it had been before.  From its open door nothing could be seen of the marks left by Nature’s passionate fury; marks which must remain forever unless some more furious passion should come to erase them.  It was hard to tell just how and wherein the whole face of the country had been so greatly changed.  The people of Cedar House knew that a great lake nearly seventy miles in length and deeper in places than the height of the tallest trees whose tops barely showed above the water, had taken the place of a range of high hills covered with primeval forest.  But this was too far away to be seen from Cedar House, and no one there had the heart to approach it.  One sad pilgrimage had been made, and that was to the ruins of Philip Alston’s house.  It was now a mere heap of fallen logs, and although these were lifted and laid in orderly rows, and the ground searched over inch by inch, there was nothing but his fine clothes and some simple furniture to show that it had ever been occupied.

“To think that he lived like this—­that he gave me everything and kept nothing for himself,” Ruth said softly through her tears, looking up in Paul Colbert’s troubled face.  “Such a desolate, lonely life.  It breaks my heart to think of it.  But I would have lived in his house if I could.  I wanted to live in it—­I wouldn’t have cared how plain and rough it was.  I wanted to live with him and cheer him and make him happy, as if he had been my own father.  I couldn’t have loved him more dearly if he had been.  And you would have loved him, too, if you had known him better.  I am sure that you would.  You couldn’t have helped loving him—­if only for his goodness to me.  And he was kind to every one.  I never heard him speak a harsh word of any living thing.  It was in being kind that he lost his life; he must have gone to see the man who was ill on the boat.”

The young doctor looked away and fixed his eyes on the men who were going over the ground around the cabin.

“Who are those men, Paul?  And what are they doing here?” she asked suddenly, observing that they seemed to be looking for something.  “It hurts me to have strangers handling these things that belonged to him.  What are they looking for?  Who are they?”

“Dearest, when a thing like this happens the law has to take certain—­”

“What has the law to do with my uncle Philip’s clothes?  No one shall touch them but me or you!” bending over the garments and gathering them up in her arms.  “What are they digging for?  Make them stop.  Oh, stop them; this spot is like his grave, the only grave he can ever have.”