The windows were curtained with rotting blankets.  Some rough furniture lay about; rusted cooking-utensils littered the tables, and at one end was a sheet-iron stove.  The place had been equipped after a fashion by deer-hunters or mountain hikers, who brought additional furnishings to the place each year and left mouldy provisions and unconsumed firewood behind.

The man succeeded finally in closing the door.  He turned upon her.

He was short and stocky.  The stolen corduroy coat covered blacksmith’s muscles now made doubly powerful by dementia.  His hair was lifeless black and clipped close, prison-fashion.  His low forehead hung over burning, mismated eyes.  From her helplessness on the floor Cora McBride stared up at him.

He came closer.

“Get up!” he ordered.  “Take that chair.  And don’t start no rough-house; whether you’re a woman or not, I’ll drill you!”

She groped to the indicated chair and raised herself, the single snowshoe still dragging from one foot.  Again the man surveyed her.  She saw his eyes and gave another inarticulate cry.

“Shut your mouth and keep it shut!  You hear me?”

She obeyed.

The greenish light burned brighter in his mismated eyes, which gazed intently at the top of her head as though it held something unearthly.

“Take off your hat!” was his next command.

She pulled off the toque.  Her hair fell in a mass on her snow-blotched shoulders.  Her captor advanced upon her.  He reached out and satisfied himself by touch that something was not there which he dreaded.  In hypnotic fear she suffered that touch.  It reassured him.

“Your hair now,” he demanded; “it don’t stand up, does it?  No, o’ course it don’t.  You ain’t him; you’re a woman.  But if your hair comes up, I’ll kill you—­understand?  If your hair comes up, I’ll kill you!”

She understood.  She understood only too well.  She was not only housed with a murderer; she was housed with a maniac.  She sensed, also, why he had come to this mountain shack so boldly.  In his dementia he knew no better.  And she was alone with him, unarmed now.

“I’ll keep it down,” she whispered, watching his face out of fear-distended eyes.

The wind blew one of the rotten blankets inward.  Thereby she knew that the window-aperture on the south wall contained no sash.  He must have removed it to provide means of escape in case he were attacked from the east door.  He must have climbed out that window when she came around the shack; that is how he had felled her from behind.

He stepped backward now until he felt the edge of the bench touch his calves.  Then he sank down, one arm stretched along the table’s rim, the hand clutching the revolver.

“Who are you?” he demanded.

“I’m Cora McB——­” She stopped—­she recalled in a flash the part her husband had played in his former capture and trial.  “I’m Cora Allen,” she corrected.  Then she waited, her wits in chaos.  She was fighting desperately to bring order out of that chaos.