When winter came, Eelan was happier still.  All the roughness and darkness of the earth was lost in a downy ocean of snow.  Where the waterfall had been there was a fairy palace of icicles glancing in the sun, and smooth white roads were made across the frozen lake.  Eelan never drew back dazzled from the glittering landscape; she was a child of the winter, and she loved its light.  She would often harness her father’s horse to the old family sleigh and drive alone across the lake.  She took her snow-shoes with her, and, leaving the horse at some friendly farmhouse, she would tramp into the woods over the trackless snow.  The girl would stand still and look up at the solemn pines and listen, awed by their majestic movement and the desolate loveliness all around.  At such time, if the thought of marriage came, she did not put it aside with the light fancy that she wished still to remain free; she longed, in the drear solitude, for some one to sympathise with her, some one who could explain the meaning of the wordless thoughts that welled up within her, the vague response of her heart to the mystery of external beauty.  Alas! among all her suitors there was not such a friend.

There was no one else in the town who cared for country walks as Eelan did—­at least, no one but the schoolmaster.  She met him occasionally, walking far from home; he was a quaint, old-looking man, and she thought he had a face like an angel’s.  She might have wished sometimes to stop and speak to him, but when they met he always appeared to have his eyes resting on the distant horizon, and his mind seemed wrapped in some learned reverie, to the oblivion of outward things.  The schoolmaster lived in the schoolhouse on the bank of the curving river, a bit below the waterfall.  He took up his abode there a few months before Eelan Reid came home from school.  He had come from somewhere nearer the centres of education—­had been imported, so to speak, for the special use of Haven Settlement, for the leading men of the place were a canny set and knew the worth of books.  His testimonials had told of a higher standard of scholarship than was usual in such schools, and the keen Scots had snapped at the chance and engaged him without an interview; but when he arrived they had been grievously disappointed.  He was a gentle, unsophisticated man, shy as a girl, and absent-minded withal.

’Aweel, I’ll not say but he’ll do to put sums and writing into the youngsters’ heads and teach them to spout their poems; but he’s not just what I call a man.’  This was the opinion which Macpherson, the portly owner of the mill, had delivered to his friends.

‘There’s something lacking, I’m thinking,’ said one; ’he’s thirty-six years old, and to see him driving his cow afield, you’d say he was sixty, and him not sickly either.’

‘I doubt he’s getting far too high a salary,’ said Macpherson solemnly.  ’To pass examinations is all very well; but he’s not got the grit in him that I’d like to see.’