“I’m going home with you,” Richard said to her as they went down the gallery stairs.

“Not a step,” said she.  “You’ve just been after the fiddle, and they’re going to dance the Fisher’s Hornpipe next.”

“You’ll be afraid in that lonesome stretch after you leave the village.”

“Afraid!” There was a ring of despairing scorn in the girl’s voice, as if she faced already such woe that the supposition of new terror was an absurdity.

They had come down to the ball-room floor, and were standing directly in front of the musicians’ gallery.  The young fiddler, Jim Otis, leaned over and looked at them.

“I don’t care,” said Richard, “I won’t let you go alone unless you take my knife.”

Madelon laughed.  “What nonsense!” said she, and tried to pass her brother.

But Richard held her by the arm while he rummaged in his pocket for the great clasp-knife which he had earned himself by the sale of some rabbit-skins, and which was the pride of his heart and his dearest treasure, and opened it.  “Here,” said he, and he forced the clasp-knife into his sister’s hand.  Otis, leaning over the gallery, saw it all.  Many of the dancers had gone to supper; there was no other person very near them.  “If you should meet a bear, you could kill him with that knife—­it’s so strong,” said the boy.  “If you don’t take it I’ll go home with you, and it’s so late father won’t let me come out again to-night.”

“Well, I’ll take it,” Madelon said, wearily, and she passed out of the ball-room with the knife in her hand, under her cloak.

When she got out in the cold night air she sped along fast over the creaking snow, still holding the knife clutched fast in her hand.  She began to lilt again as she went, and again Burr and Dorothy danced together before her eyes.  She passed Parson Fair’s house, and the best-room windows were lighted.  She thought that Burr was there, and she lilted more loudly the Virginia reel.

After Parson Fair’s house was some time left behind, and she had come into the lengthy stretch of road, she saw a shadowy figure ahead.  She could not at first tell whether it was moving towards or from her—­whether it was a man or a woman; or, indeed, whether it were not a forest tree encroaching on the road and moving in the wind.  She kept on swiftly, holding her knife under her cloak.  She had stopped singing.

Presently she saw that the figure was a man, and coming her way; and then her heart stood still, for she knew by the swing of his shoulders that it was Burr Gordon.  She threw back her proud head and sped along towards him, grasping her knife under her cloak and looking neither to the right nor left.  She swerved not her eyes a hair’s-breadth when she came close to him—­so close that their shoulders almost touched in passing in the narrow path.

Suddenly there was a quick sigh in her ear—­“Oh, Madelon!” Then an arm was flung around her waist and hot lips were pressed to her own.