The first glimmering of dawn was visible as he stepped off the piazza;
the wind was blowing fiercely and the snow still falling. He had not
gone a hundred yards before he knew that the expedition was to be more
difficult than he had imagined. To make headway against the wind was a
constant struggle, and he seemed to slip back in the snow at every step.
Still the natural obstinacy of his nature was aroused, and as his
attention was more and more engaged with the endeavor to make his way,
he had less time to think of the probable futility of his proceeding.

Long before he sighted the hut, he was wet to the waist, not only
because he had been in half a dozen drifts, but because the snow had
penetrated every crevice of his clothing.

The hut was a forlorn little spot upon the landscape, a patch of grey on
the stretch of forest and snow. A shutter blowing in the wind gave an
impression of desertion, for how could any one, however wretched, sit
idle under that recurrent bang?

Drawing his revolver, Geoffrey approached the door. He had no intention
of giving a possible enemy an opportunity to prepare himself, and so did
not knock, but, putting his shoulder against the door, shoved mightily.
The hinges broke from the rotten wood at once, and he stumbled in.

The pale light of the early winter morning showed a depressing interior,
for the window was not the only opening. There was a great gap in the
roof where, earlier in the night, the chimney had fallen, and now its
bricks littered the floor, already well covered with snow. Some attempt
must have been made, as McVay had boasted, of "fixing it up"; there were
books in the shelves on the walls, and a black iron stove on which the