Was that tale true? John Bates would have thought it a great sin to
deceive himself or another, and yet, such was the power of his love,
blown to white heat by the breath of regret and purified, that when he
spoke of the incidents of Sissy's childhood, of the cleverness she
displayed when he taught her, of her growth until the day in which he
had offended her by speaking of marriage, when he told of her tears, and
prayers, and anger, and of his own despotism, the picture of it all that
arose in Trenholme's imagination was exceedingly different from what
would have been there had he seen the reality. He would not have liked
Cameron's daughter had he seen her, but, seeing her through the medium
of a heart that loved her, all the reverence that is due to womanly
sweetness stirred in him. Cupid may be blind, but to the eyes of
chastened love is given the vision of God.

When it appeared that Bates had said all that he was going to say, Alec
Trenholme sat pondering the problem of this girl's disappearance with
more mental energy than he had before given to it. Knowing the place
now, he knew that what Bates and Saul had averred was true--that there
were but two ways by which any one could leave it while water was
unfrozen, one by the boat, and the other by striking at random across
the hill to the back of the farm--a route that could only lead either to
one of several isolated farms, or, by a forty-mile tramp round by the
nearest river bridge, to the railway. At no farmhouse had she been seen,
and the journey by the bridge was too long to have been accomplished
before the snow storm must have impeded her. It was in attempting this
journey, Bates was convinced, that she had perished. There was, of
course, another possibility that had been mooted at Turrifs Settlement;
but the testimony of Bates and Saul, agreeing in the main points, had
entirely silenced it. Trenholme, thinking of this now, longed to