garments as a man would need on board a steamer and in the early spring
in Egypt. They had been packed and in readiness since the day she sailed
away, when she had told him of the possible sign. But there had been
no sign. Nor did he longer believe in one. So in the baggage-room of an
hotel the trunks were abandoned, accumulating layers of dust and charges
for storage.

At the farm the snow still lay in the crevices of the rocks and beneath
the branches of the evergreens, but under the wet, dead leaves little
flowers had begun to show their faces. The "backbone of the winter was
broken" and spring was in the air. But as Ainsley was certain that his
heart also was broken, the signs of spring did not console him. At each
week-end he filled the house with people, but they found him gloomy and
he found them dull. He liked better the solitude of the midweek days.
Then for hours he would tramp through the woods, pretending she was at
his side, pretending he was helping her across the streams swollen with
winter rains and melted snow. On these excursions he cut down trees that
hid a view he thought she would have liked, he cut paths over which she
might have walked. Or he sat idly in a flat-bottomed scow in the lake
and made a pretence of fishing. The loneliness of the lake and the
isolation of the boat suited his humor. He did not find it true
that misery loves company. At least to human beings he preferred his
companions of Lone Lake--the beaver building his home among the reeds,
the kingfisher, the blue heron, the wild fowl that in their flight north
rested for an hour or a day upon the peaceful waters. He looked upon
them as his guests, and when they spread their wings and left him again
alone he felt he had been hardly used.

It was while he was sunk in this state of melancholy, and some months
after Miss Kirkland had sailed to Egypt, that hope returned.