The sun-flooded hillside showed plainly the path of the avalanche; blank, featureless it lay, without sheltering tree or rock to diversify its bald monotony.  But it was bare no longer, for the brown earth was covering her nakedness with a delicate mist of green.  Beyond the sweep of the avalanche the maples were swinging their tassels, and the swelling buds of the oaks and aspens showed that they were almost ready to burst into leaf; the air was full of bird calls and fluttering wings, and the breeze, although chill, seemed ineffably soft in comparison with its recent rigorous blasts.

Pearl and Seagreave had gone but a short distance from the cabin when suddenly Pearl shielded her eyes with her hand.  “Look,” she cried excitedly, and pointed to two men who were standing down by the bridge evidently awaiting them, “I can’t quite see from here, but it is, it must be, Bob and Pop.”

She almost flew down the hill after that, and Seagreave, his face suddenly set in lines of determination, kept pace with her.  He had noticed, even if she had not, that those two motionless figures at the bridge had not advanced one step to meet her, but were maintaining an attitude portentously watchful, it seemed to him, and boding ill for the warmth and spontaneity of the welcome she so evidently expected.

But Pearl appeared to see nothing of this, and as she drew near the two who awaited her, she would have flown like a bird into her father’s arms.  But before she could throw her arms about him he caught her wrists and pushed her back a step or two anything but gently.

“Why weren’t you down at the bridge last night?” he asked sternly.  The old man had changed since the avalanche.  There were anxious deep hollows about his eyes which were at once brighter and more sunken than ever.  His parchment skin looked livid and lifeless and his mouth had tightened until it was drawn in and pinched.

“Why weren’t you down at the gully waiting for us?” he asked again.  “The bridge was across at midnight.  The boys have been working night and day to get you out, and this is the way you act, hiding up there in that cabin like you’d as lief stay there as not.”

“Yes, Pearl, why weren’t you down to meet us?” Bob Flick spoke for the first time, his slow, soft voice was placating and yet it was evident that his sympathies were with Gallito.  “The boys had the place all lit up with torches while they worked, and your Pop and I waited half the night for you down here.  Why didn’t you come?” Neither of the men had so far even glanced at Seagreave, but ignored him as thoroughly as if he were not there.

Pearl looked at Flick a moment in frowning incomprehension.  Petted, spoiled child that she was, she could not bear to be scolded where she had expected a rapturous welcome.  From Flick to her father she glanced, and then back again.  “What’s the matter with you two?” she cried.  “Are you mad just because I didn’t come chasing down the hill in the dead of night?  How did I know that the boys were going to get the bridge across at midnight?”