poise of decision at which she had arrived affected their minds in some subtle fashion.  Eugene, when he returned late in the afternoon, noticed the change in her, in spite of his own perturbation.  He looked hard at her staid face, fixed into a sort of unquestioning and dignified acquiescence with misery, but he said nothing.  Madelon, in this state, was not to be questioned even by her father.  He simply muttered to himself, as he strode out of the room, that she was a woman.

Madelon’s manner was the same as the days went on.  There ceased to be any question as to her sanity among her father and brothers.  She no longer paced overhead like a wild thing.  She no longer made fierce outbreaks of despairing appeal.  They no longer kept watch over her lest she commit some folly, and became easier in their minds about her.

They made no objections when, three weeks later, she asked for the sleigh and the roan to go to New Salem and make some purchases for herself.  She went early in the afternoon, and returned in good season with her parcels.  They did not dream that she had been in a strange spirit of bitterness and shameful misery and feminine pride to purchase her wedding-gown for her marriage with Lot Gordon.

Her frantic and unreasoning impulse of concealment was still strong.  It was almost as if the whole horror of it were not so plainly thrust upon her if none but she knew it; then there was the agony of shame which made her fain to turn her back and deafen her ears to her own self, let alone all these others.

They rather wondered, the next morning, when they saw Madelon seated at work upon some shining lengths of silk, at the magnificence of her purchase in New Salem; but they knew that she had a little private fund of her own, which they had never questioned her right to spend.

“Guess she’s been saving her egg-and-butter money,” Abner said, when she went out for something.

His father nodded.  “Glad she’s got a new gown.  Guess she’ll show folks she ain’t quite done for on account of that fellow,” he said.

When Madelon was seated at her work again, and he passed her to leave the room, he laid a heavy, caressing hand on her black head.  “Glad ye’ve got ye a handsome gown,” said he.  “It’s money well spent.”

That day there was a great snow-storm—­the last of the season.  There had been many such that winter.  Snow fell upon snow, and the bare ground was never seen.  This time the storm lasted two days.  On the morning of the third the sun came out and the wind blew.  There was a northern gale all day.  The new snow arose like a white spirit from its downfall, and was again all abroad in the air.  It moved across the fields in great diamond-glittering shafts; it crested itself over the brows of hills in flashing waves; it lengthened its sharp slants of white light from hour to hour against the windward sides of the fences and houses.