“I’m tied hand and foot, Matt.  There isn’t a thing I can do,” he began again.

“You must write to me sometimes, Ethan.”

“Oh, what good’ll writing do?  I want to put my hand out and touch you.  I want to do for you and care for you.  I want to be there when you’re sick and when you’re lonesome.”

“You mustn’t think but what I’ll do all right.”

“You won’t need me, you mean?  I suppose you’ll marry!”

“Oh, Ethan!” she cried.

“I don’t know how it is you make me feel, Matt.  I’d a’most rather have you dead than that!”

“Oh, I wish I was, I wish I was!” she sobbed.

The sound of her weeping shook him out of his dark anger, and he felt ashamed.

“Don’t let’s talk that way,” he whispered.

“Why shouldn’t we, when it’s true?  I’ve been wishing it every minute of the day.”

“Matt!  You be quiet!  Don’t you say it.”

“There’s never anybody been good to me but you.”

“Don’t say that either, when I can’t lift a hand for you!”

“Yes; but it’s true just the same.”

They had reached the top of School House Hill and Starkfield lay below them in the twilight.  A cutter, mounting the road from the village, passed them by in a joyous flutter of bells, and they straightened themselves and looked ahead with rigid faces.  Along the main street lights had begun to shine from the house-fronts and stray figures were turning in here and there at the gates.  Ethan, with a touch of his whip, roused the sorrel to a languid trot.

As they drew near the end of the village the cries of children reached them, and they saw a knot of boys, with sleds behind them, scattering across the open space before the church.

“I guess this’ll be their last coast for a day or two,” Ethan said, looking up at the mild sky.

Mattie was silent, and he added:  “We were to have gone down last night.”

Still she did not speak and, prompted by an obscure desire to help himself and her through their miserable last hour, he went on discursively:  “Ain’t it funny we haven’t been down together but just that once last winter?”

She answered:  “It wasn’t often I got down to the village.”

“That’s so,” he said.

They had reached the crest of the Corbury road, and between the indistinct white glimmer of the church and the black curtain of the Varnum spruces the slope stretched away below them without a sled on its length.  Some erratic impulse prompted Ethan to say:  “How’d you like me to take you down now?”

She forced a laugh.  “Why, there isn’t time!”

“There’s all the time we want.  Come along!” His one desire now was to postpone the moment of turning the sorrel toward the Flats.

“But the girl,” she faltered.  “The girl’ll be waiting at the station.”

“Well, let her wait.  You’d have to if she didn’t.  Come!”