The girl sighed, and turned away to thrust a few small billets into the stove.  She chose them carefully, for the big box whose ugliness she had hidden by a strip of cheap printed cotton was almost empty.  The hired man, seeing no prospect of receiving his wages, had departed after a stormy interview, and shortly after his son followed him.  Townshead discovered that sawing wood was especially unsuited to his constitution.  Then the girl increased the draught a little and endeavoured to repress a shiver.  The house was damp for want of proper packing, and the cold wind that came down from the high peaks moaned about it eerily.  It was also very lonely, and the girl, who was young, felt a great longing for human fellowship.

Her father presently took up a book, and there was silence only broken by the rattle of loose shingles overhead and the soft thud against the windows of driving snow, while the girl sat dreaming over her sewing of the brighter days in far-off England which had slipped away from her for ever.  Five years was not a very long time, but during it her English friends had forgotten her, and one who had scarcely left her side that memorable night had, though she read of the doings of his regiment now and then, sent her no word or token.  A little flush crept into her cheek as, remembering certain words of his, she glanced at her reddened wrists and little toil-hardened hands.  She who had been a high-spirited girl with the world at her feet then, was now one of the obscure toilers whose work was never done.  Still, because it was only on rare occasions that work left her leisure to think about herself, it had not occurred to her that she had lost but little by the change.  The hands that had once been soft and white were now firm and brown, the stillness of the great firs and cedars had given her a calm tranquillity in place of restless haste, and frost and sun the clear, warm-tinted complexion, while a look of strength and patience had replaced the laughter in her hazel eyes.

Suddenly, however, there was a trampling in the snow and a sound of voices, followed after, an interval by a knocking at the door.  It swung open, and two whitened objects loaded with bags and packages strode into the room.  The blast that came in with them set the lamp flickering, and sent a chill through the girl, but she rose with a smile when rancher Alton stood, a shapeless figure, with the moisture on his bronzed face, beside the stove.

“Take those things through into the kitchen, Charley,” he said.  “I think we’ve got them all, Miss Townshead.  I hope, sir, you are feeling pretty well.”

Townshead made some answer with a slight bend of his head, but Alton appeared a trifle dubious when the girl offered him hospitality.

“I’m afraid the beasts are used up, or I wouldn’t think of it,” he said.

Nellie Townshead’s eyes twinkled as she glanced at him.  “Could you not have put it in another way?” she said.