Eliza dropped the linen and came downstairs rather quickly.  Harkness returned to his window; she came up beside him.  The inner window was open, only one pane was between them and the outer air.  In yards all round cocks were crowing, as, on a mild day in the Canadian March, cocks will crow continually.  Light snow of the last downfall lay on the opposite roofs, and made the hills just seen behind them very white.  The whole winter’s piles of snow lay in the ridges between the footpaths and the road.  Had it not been that some few of the buildings were of brick, and that on one or two of the wooden ones the white paint was worn off, the wide street would have been a picture painted only in different tones of white.  But the clothes of the people were of dark colour, and the one vehicle in sight was a blue box-sleigh, drawn by a shaggy pony.

Eliza was conscious of the picture only as one is conscious of surroundings upon which the eye does not focus.  Her sight fastened on the old man, now almost opposite the hotel.  He was of a broad, powerful frame that had certainly once possessed great strength.  Even now he was strong; he stooped a little, but he held his head erect, and the well-formed, prominent features of his weather-beaten face showed forth a tremendous force of some sort; even at that distance the brightness of his eyes was visible under bushy brows, grey as his hair.  His clothes were of the most ordinary sort, old and faded.  His cap was of the commonest fur; he grasped it now in his hand, going bareheaded.  Tapping the ground with his staff, he walked with nervous haste, looking upward the while, as blind men often look.

Harkness did not look much out of the window; he was inspecting Eliza’s face:  and when she turned to him he gave her a glance that, had she been a weaker woman, would have been translated into many words—­question and invective; but her silence dominated him.  It was a look also that, had he been a stronger man, he would have kept to himself, for it served no purpose but to betray that there was some undercurrent of antagonism to her in his mind.

“You’re very queer to-day, Mr. Harkness,” she remarked, and with that she withdrew.

But when the door closed she was not really gone to the young man.  He saw her as clearly with his mind as a moment before he had seen her with his eyes, and he pondered now the expression on her face when she looked out of the window.  It told him, however, absolutely nothing of the secret he was trying to wring from her.

There was no square in Chellaston, no part of the long street much wider than any other or more convenient as a public lounging place.  Here, in front of the hotel, was perhaps the most open spot, and Harkness hoped the old man would make a stand here and preach; but he turned aside and went down a small side street, so Harkness, who had no desire to identify himself too publicly with his strange protege, was forced to leave to the curiosity of others the observation of his movements.