Lot Gordon sat watching her.  There was a hungry look in his hollow blue eyes.  Now and then he coughed painfully, and clapped his hand to his chest with an impatient movement.

“Well, whether I ever get to heaven or not, I’ve heard music,” he said, when she passed him with the bread-bowl on her hip and her soft arm curved around it.  He reached out his slender hand and caught hold of her dress-skirt; she jerked away with a haughty motion, and set the bowl on the hearth.  “You’d better rake down the fire now, Richard,” said she.

The boy jostled Lot roughly as he passed around him to get the fire-shovel.  Lot looked at the clock, and the hand was near twelve.  He arose slowly.

“I met Burr on his way down to Parson Fair’s,” he said.

Madelon covered up the bread closely with a linen towel.  There was a surging in her ears, as if misery itself had a veritable sound, and her face was as white as the ashes on the hearth, but she kept it turned away from Lot.

“Well,” said he, in his husky drawl, “a rose isn’t a rose to a bee, she’s only a honey-pot; and she’s only one out of a shelfful to him; she can’t complain, it’s what she was born to.  If she finds any fault it’s got to be with creation, and what’s one rose to face creation?  There’s nothing to do but to make the best of it.  Good-night, Madelon.”

“Good-night,” said Madelon.  The color had come back to her cheeks, and she looked back at him proudly, standing beside her bread-bowl on the hearth.

Lot passed out, turning his delicate face over his shoulder with a subtle smile as he went.  Richard clapped the door to after him with a jar that shook the house, and shot the bolt viciously.  “I’ll get my gun and follow him if you say so, and then I’ll find Burr Gordon,” he said, turning a furious face to his sister.

“Would you make me a laughing-stock to the whole town?” said she.  “Rake down the fire; it’s time to go to bed.”

She looked as proudly at her brother as she had done at Lot.  The resemblance between the two faces faded a little as they confronted each other.  A virile quality in the boy’s anger made the difference of sex more apparent.  He looked at her, holding his wrath, as it were, like a two-edged sword which must smite some one.  “If I thought you cared about that man that has jilted you—­and I’ve heard the talk about it,” said he, “I’d feel like shooting you.”

“You needn’t shoot,” returned Madelon.

The boy looked at her as angrily as if she were Burr Gordon.  Suddenly her mouth quivered a little and her eyes fell.  The boy flung both his arms around her.  “I don’t care,” he said, brokenly, in his sweet treble—­“I don’t care, you’re the handsomest girl in the town, and the best and the smartest, and not one can sing like you, and I’ll kill any man that treats you ill—­I will, I will!” He was sobbing on his sister’s shoulder; she stood still, looking over his dark head at the snow-hung window and the night outside.  Her lips and eyes were quite steady now; she had recovered self-control when her brother’s failed him, as if by some curious mental seesaw.