“I tell you I don’t know.”  Richard would say no more.  He blew out his candle and tumbled into bed, turned his face to the window and lay awake until and hour before dawn.  Then he arose, dressed himself, and went down-stairs.  He put more wood on the hearth fire, then knelt down before it, and puffed out his boyish cheeks at the bellows until the new flames crept through the smoke.  Then he lighted the lantern, and went to the barn to milk and feed the stock.  That was always Richard’s morning task, and he always on his way thither replenished the hearth fire, that his sister Madelon might have a lighter and speedier task at preparing breakfast.  Madelon usually arose a half-hour after Richard, and she was not behindhand this morning.  She entered the great living-room, lit the candles, and went about getting breakfast.  Human daily needs arise and set on tragedy as remorselessly as the sun.

Madelon Hautville, who had washed but a few hours ago the stain of murder from her hand, in whose heart was an unsounded depth of despair, mixed up the corn-meal daintily with cream, and baked the cakes which her father and brothers loved before the fire, and laid the table.  She had always attended to the needs of the males of her family with the stern faithfulness of an Indian squaw.  Now, as she worked, the wonder, softer than her other emotions, was upon her as to how they would get on when she was in prison and after she was dead; for she made no doubt that she had killed Lot Gordon and the sheriff would be there presently for her, and she felt plainly the fretting of the rope around her soft neck.  She hoped they would not come for her until breakfast was prepared and eaten, the dishes cleared away, and the house tidied; but she listened like a savage for a foot-fall and a hand at the door.  She had packed a little bundle ready to take with her before she left her chamber.  Her cloak and hood were laid out on the bed.

When she sat down at the table with her father and brothers, all of them except Richard and Louis stared at her with open amazement and questioned her.  Richard and Louis stared furtively at their sister’s face, as stiff, set, and pale as if she were dead, but they asked no questions.  Madelon said, in a voice that was not hers, that she was not sick, and put pieces of Indian cake into her untasting mouth and listened.  But breakfast was well over and the dishes put away before anybody came.  And then it was not the sheriff to hale her to prison on a charge of murder, but an old man from the village big with news.

He was a relative of the Hautvilles, an uncle on the mother’s side, old and broken, scarcely able to find his feeble way on his shrunken legs through the snow; but, with the instinct of gossip, the sharp nose for his neighbors’ affairs, still alert in him, he had arisen at dawn to canvass the village, and had come thither at first, since he anticipated that he might possibly have the delight of bringing the intelligence before any of the family had heard it elsewhere.  He came in, dragging his old, snow-laden feet, tapping heavily with his stout stick, and settled, cackling, into a chair.