The young girls retired early to their white snow-drifts:  Jessie not without some hilarious struggles with hers, in which she was, however, quickly surprised by the deep and refreshing sleep of youth; Christie to lie awake and listen to the night wind, that had changed from the first cool whispers of sunset to the sturdy breath of the mountain.  At times the frail house shook and trembled.  Wandering gusts laden with the deep resinous odors of the wood found their way through the imperfect jointure of the two cabins, swept her cheek and even stirred her long, wide-open lashes.  A broken spray of pine needles rustled along the roof, or a pine cone dropped with a quick reverberating tap-tap that for an instant startled her.  Lying thus, wide awake, she fell into a dreamy reminiscence of the past, hearing snatches of old melody in the moving pines, fragments of sentences, old words, and familiar epithets in the murmuring wind at her ear, and even the faint breath of long-forgotten kisses on her cheek.  She remembered her mother—­a pallid creature, who had slowly faded out of one of her father’s vague speculations in a vaguer speculation of her own, beyond his ken—­whose place she had promised to take at her father’s side.  The words, “Watch over him, Christie; he needs a woman’s care,” again echoed in her ears, as if borne on the night wind from the lonely grave in the lonelier cemetery by the distant sea.  She had devoted herself to him with some little sacrifices of self, only remembered now for their uselessness in saving her father the disappointment that sprang from his sanguine and one-idea’d temperament.  She thought of him lying asleep in the other room, ready on the morrow to devote those fateful qualities to the new enterprise that with equally fateful disposition she believed would end in failure.  It did not occur to her that the doubts of her own practical nature were almost as dangerous and illogical as his enthusiasm, and that for that reason she was fast losing what little influence she possessed over him.  With the example of her mother’s weakness before her eyes, she had become an unsparing and distrustful critic, with the sole effect of awakening his distrust and withdrawing his confidence from her.

He was beginning to deceive her as he had never deceived her mother.  Even Jessie knew more of this last enterprise than she did herself.

All that did not tend to decrease her utter restlessness.  It was already past midnight when she noticed that the wind had again abated.  The mountain breeze had by this time possessed the stifling valleys and heated bars of the river in its strong, cold embraces; the equilibrium of Nature was restored, and a shadowy mist rose from the hollow.  A stillness, more oppressive and intolerable than the previous commotion, began to pervade the house and the surrounding woods.  She could hear the regular breathing of the sleepers; she even fancied she could detect the faint impulses