The blazing logs through the open stove door cast flickering flamelight
upon the young man, who was restlessly warming himself, shifting his
position constantly, as a man must who tries to warm himself too
hastily. A traveller read in ancient lore, coming suddenly on this cabin
amid its leagues of snow, and looking in to see its light and warmth and
the goodly figure of its occupant, might have been tempted to think that
the place had been raised by some magician's wand, and would vanish
again when the spell was past. And to Alec Trenholme, just then, the
station to which he was so habituated, the body which usually seemed the
larger part of himself, might have been no more than a thought or a
dream, so intent was he upon another sort of reality. He was regardless
of it all, even of the heat that, at the same time, scorched him and
made him shiver. He thought of the words that he--he, Alec
Trenholme--had lifted up his voice to say, waking the echoes of the
snow-muffled silence with proclamation of--He tried not to remember what
he had proclaimed, feeling crushed with a new knowledge of his own
falseness; and when perforce the thought came upon him of the invisible
Actor in the night's drama whose presence, whose action, he had been so
strenuously asserting, he was like a man in pain who does not know what
remedy to try; and his mood was tense, he sought only relief. He essayed
one thought and another to reason away the cloud that was upon him; and
then he tried saying his prayers, which of late had fallen somewhat into
disuse. It was only by way of a try to see if it would do any good; and
he did not give himself much time, for he felt that he must go out again
to try to bring in the old man.

Before he had put on his fur cap a second time, however, he heard the
whistle of the engine he had been expecting now for nearly twenty-four
hours. It came like a sudden trumpet-sound from the outside world to
call him back to his ordinary thoughts and deeds. For the first moment