She made as if to answer, but did not.  Both men were looking at her now.  The snow was white on her hair.  Her tears had so long been dry that the swollen look was passing from her face.  It had been until now at best a heavy face, but feeling that is strong enough works like a master’s swift chisel to make the features the vehicle of the soul.  Both men were relieved when she suddenly took her eyes from them and her shadow from their work and went away.

Saul stretched his head and looked after her.  There was no pity in his little apple face and beady eyes, only a sort of cunning curiosity, and the rest was dulness and weakness.

Bates did not look after her.  He shut his knife and fell to joining the coffin.

CHAPTER IV.

The girl lifted the latch of the house-door, and went in.  She was in the living-room.  The old woman sat in a chair that was built of wood against the log wall.  She was looking discontentedly before her at an iron stove, which had grown nearly cold for lack of attention.  Some chairs, a table, a bed, and a ladder which led to the room above, made the chief part of the furniture.  A large mongrel dog, which looked as if he had some blood of the grey southern sheep dog in him rose from before the stove and greeted the in-comer silently.

The dog had blue eyes, and he held up his face wistfully, as if he knew something was the matter.  The old woman complained of cold.  It was plain that she did not remember anything concerning death or tears.

There was one other door in the side of the room which led to the only inner chamber.  The girl went into this chamber, and the heed she gave to the dog’s sympathy was to hold the door and let him follow her.  Then she bolted it.  There were two narrow beds built against the wall; in one of these the corpse of a grey-haired man was lying.  The dog had seen death before, and he evidently understood what it was.  He did not move quickly or sniff about; he laid his head on the edge of the winding-sheet and moaned a little.

The girl did not moan.  She knelt down some way from the bed, with a desire to pray.  She did not pray; she whispered her anger, her unhappiness, her desires, to the air of the cold, still room, repeating the same phrases again and again with clenched hands and the convulsive gestures of half-controlled passion.

The reason she did not pray was that she believed that she could only pray when she was “good,” and after falling on her knees she became aware that goodness, as she understood it, was not in her just then, nor did she even desire it.  The giving vent to her misery in half-audible whispers followed involuntarily on her intention to pray.  She knew not why she thus poured out her heart; she hardly realised what she said or wished to say; yet, because some expression of her helpless need was necessary, and because, through fear and a rugged sense of her own evil, she sedulously averted her mind from the thought of God, her action had, more than anything else, the semblance of an invocation to the dead man to arise and save her, and take vengeance on her enemy.