his hands_."

When prayers were ended, however, and he was sitting in his library
alone, he said with a subdued glee, "That is the way to do it,--the one
I see first!" And Mr. Denner went to bed with a quiet mind, and the peace
which follows the decision of a momentous question.




CHAPTER XI.


The cold that winter was more persistent and severe in the mountains than
down in Ashurst.

At Lockhaven the river had been frozen over for a month, even above the
bridge and the mills, where the current was swiftest. Long lines of
sawdust, which had been coiling and whirling in the eddies, or stretching
across the black seething water, were caught in the ice, or blown about
with the powdered snow over its surface.

Rafts could not come down the river, so the mills had no work to do, for
the logs on hand at the beginning of the cold snap had been sawed into
long rough planks, and piled in the lumber-yards, ready to be rafted as
soon as the thaw came. The cold, still air was sweet with the fragrance
of fresh pine boards, and the ground about the mills was covered with
sawdust, so that footsteps fell as silently as though on velvet, instead
of ringing sharp against the frozen ground.