He was tramping fast now down the trough of the little valley, under trees that, though leafless, were thick enough to shut out the surrounding landscape.  The pencils of the evening sunlight, it is true, found their way all over the rounded snow-ground, but the sunset was hidden by the branches about him, and nothing but the snow and the tree trunks was forced upon his eye, except now and then a bit of blue seen through the branches—­a blue that had lost much depth of colour with the decline of day, and come nearer earth—­a pale cold blue that showed exquisite tenderness of contrast as seen through the dove-coloured grey of maple boughs.

Where the valley dipped under water and the lake in the midst of the hills had its shore, Trenholme came out from under the trees.  The sun had set.  The plain of the ice and the snowclad hills looked blue with cold—­unutterably cold, and dead as lightless snow looks when the eye has grown accustomed to see it animated with light.  He could not see where, beneath the snow, the land ended and the ice began; but it mattered little.  He walked out on the white plain scanning the south-eastern hill-slope for the house toward which he intended to bend his steps.  He was well out on the lake before he saw far enough round the first cliff to come in sight of the log house and its clearing, and no sooner did he see it than he heard his approach, although he was yet so far away, heralded by the barking of a dog.  Before he had gone much farther a man came forth with a dog to meet him.

The two men had seen one another before, in the days when the neighbourhood had turned out in the fruitless search for Cameron’s daughter and for Cameron himself.  At that time a fevered eye and haggard face had been the signs that Bates was taking his misfortune to heart; now Trenholme looked, half expecting to see the same tokens developed by solitude into some demonstration of manner; but this was not the case.  His flesh had certainly wasted, and his eye had the excitement of expectation in it as he met his visitor; but the man was the same man still, with the stiff, unexpressive manner which was the expression of his pride.

Bates spoke of the weather, of the news Trenholme brought from Turrifs Settlement, of the railway—­all briefly, and without warmth of interest; then he asked why Trenholme had come.

“You haven’t been able to get any one yet to fell your trees for you?”

Bates replied in the negative.

“They think the place is dangerous,” said the other, as if giving information, although he knew perfectly that Bates was aware of this.  He had grown a little diffident in stating why he had come.

“Fools they are!” said Bates, ill-temperedly.

Trenholme said that he was willing to do the work Bates had wanted a man for, at the same wages.

“It’s rough work for a gentlemany young man like you.”

Trenholme’s face twitched with a peculiar smile.  “I can handle an axe.  I can learn to fell trees.”