Having left behind him the skeleton forms of the trees, he was trudging across an open plain, flat almost as the surface of the lake which he had traversed yesterday.  Sometimes the fences at the side of the road were wholly hidden, more often they showed the top of their posts or upper bar; sometimes he could see cross-fences, as if outlining fields, so that he supposed he still walked through lands farmed from the lonely stone house, that he was still upon his lady’s domain.  He meditated upon her, judging that she was sweet beyond compare, although why he thought so, after her mistrust and derision, was one of those secrets which the dimpled Cupid only could explain.  He was forced to acknowledge the fact that thus he did think, because here he was walking, whither he hardly knew, how he hardly knew, battling with the gale, hustled roughly by its white wings, in danger at every turn of falling off the two small moving rafts of his shoes into a sea in which no man could swim very long.  He wondered, should his snow-shoes break, if he would be able to flounder to the rim of the fence?  How long could he sit there?  Certainly it would seem, looking north and south and east and west, that he would need to sit as long as the life in him might endure the frost.

At length a shed or small barn met his eye.  His own approach seemed to have been heard and answered from within; the neigh of a horse greeted him.  At first he supposed that some horses belonging to the house were stabled here, and neglected because the roads were impassable; then he judged that so slight a shed could not be intended for a stable.

He answered the animal’s cry by seeking the door.  Against it the drift was not deep, for, as it opened on the sheltered side, he had only the snowfall to scrape away.  The door, which had very recently been freed from its crust of frost, yielded easily.  He found a brown shaggy horse tied within, and beside it a sleigh, such as he had frequently seen, a mere platform of wood upon runners.  Otherwise the shed was empty.  Courthope was quickly struck by the recognition of something which set his memory working.  The old buffalo-skin on the sleigh was such as was common, but the way it was stretched upon a heap of sacks made him remember the sleigh that he had yesterday passed upon the river, and the keen sinister face of the driver, which had ill contrasted with his apparent sleep and stupidity.

Courthope tossed aside the skin with a jerk.  A rum bottle, a small hoard of frozen bread and bacon, a heavy blanket folded beneath, all seemed to prove that the driver had made provision for a longer journey.  The horse had no food before it; no blanket was upon its back.  Probably its driver had not intended to leave it here so long.  Where was the driver?  This quickly became in Courthope’s mind the all-important question.  Why had he been skulking on the most lonely part of the lake?  And now, recalling again the man’s face, he believed that he had had an evil design.