singer, and then bent her head, that the one ear yet sensible to
sound might avail of every note. At the close, groping forward,
she murmured with the high-pitched quaver of old age:

"So she sang, my Thora; my last and brightest. What is she like,
she whose voice is like my dead Thora's? Are her eyes blue?"

"Blue as the sky."

"So were my Thora's! Is her hair fair, and in plaits to the
waist?" "Even so," answered White Fell herself, and met the
advancing hands with her own, and guided them to corroborate her
words by touch.

"Like my dead Thora's," repeated the old woman; and then her
trembling hands rested on the fur-clad shoulders, and she bent
forward and kissed the smooth fair face that White Fell upturned,
nothing loth, to receive and return the caress.

So Christian saw them as he entered.

He stood a moment. After the starless darkness and the icy night
air, and the fierce silent two hours' race, his senses reeled on
sudden entrance into warmth, and light, and the cheery hum of
voices. A sudden unforeseen anguish assailed him, as now first he
entertained the possibility of being overmatched by her wiles and
her daring, if at the approach of pure death she should start up
at bay transformed to a terrible beast, and achieve a savage glut
at the last. He looked with horror and pity on the harmless,
helpless folk, so unwitting of outrage to their comfort and