It was in the afternoon, and a chill north breeze ruffled the leaden surface of the lake and seemed to curdle the water with its breath; patches of soft ice already mottled it.  The sky was white, and leafless maple and evergreen seemed almost alike colourless in the dull, cold air.  Bates had turned from his work to stand for a few moments on the hard trodden level in front of the house and survey the weather.  He had reason to survey it with anxiety.  He was anxious to send the dead man’s body to the nearest graveyard for decent burial, and the messenger and cart sent on this errand were to bring back another man to work with him at felling the timber that was to be sold next spring.  The only way between his house and other houses lay across the lake and through a gap in the hills, a way that was passable now, and passable in calm days when winter had fully come, but impassable at the time of forming ice and of falling and drifting snow.  He hoped that the snow and ice would hold off until his plan could be carried out, but he held his face to the keen cold breeze and looked at the mottled surface of the lake with irritable anxiety.  It was not his way to confide his anxiety to any one; he was bearing it alone when the girl, who had been sauntering aimlessly about, came to him.

“If I don’t go with the boat to-morrow,” she said, “I’ll walk across as soon as the ice’ll bear.”

With that he turned upon her.  “And if I was a worse man than I am I’d let ye.  It would be a comfort to me to be rid of ye.  Where would ye go, or what would ye do?  Ye ought to be only too thankful to have a comfortable home where ye’re kept from harm.  It’s a cruel and bad world, I tell ye; it’s going to destruction as fast as it can, and ye’d go with it.”

The girl shook with passion.  “I’d do nothing of the sort,” she choked.

All the anger and dignity of her being were aroused, but it did not follow that she had any power to give them adequate utterance.  She turned from him, and, as she stood, the attitude of her whole figure spoke such incredulity, scorn, and anger, that the flow of hot-tempered arguments with which he was still ready to seek to persuade her reason, died on his lips.  He lost all self-control in increasing ill-temper.

“Ye may prance and ye may dance”—­he jerked the phrase between his teeth, using words wholly inapplicable to her attitude because he could not analyse its offensiveness sufficiently to find words that applied to it.  “Yes, prance and dance as much as ye like, but ye’ll not go in the boat to-morrow if ye’d six fathers to bury instead of one, and ye’ll not set foot out of this clearing, where I can look after ye.  I said to the dead I’d take care of ye, and I’ll do it—­ungrateful lass though ye are.”

He hurled the last words at her as he turned and went into a shed at the side of the house in which he had before been working.

The girl stood quite still as long as he was within sight.  She seemed conscious of his presence though she was not looking towards him, for as soon as he had stepped within the low opening of the shed, she moved away, walking in a wavering track across the tilled land, walking as if movement was the end of her purpose, not as if she had destination.