ruin glared against the snow-covered hills and the dazzling blue of the
sky; here and there a puff of steam showed where the melting snow on the
cooler beams dripped on the hot embers below. Some scattered groups of
lumbermen and their forlorn wives braved the cold, and stood talking the
fire over, for, after all, it was the immediate interest; death would not
come to them for years, perhaps, but where were they going to get money
for their families during the spring? There could be no rafting down the
river until after the loggers had brought their rafts from up in the
mountains, to be sawed into planks.

Alfaretta's father, who stood contemplating the ruins, and moralizing
when any one would stop to listen to him, had pointed this out. Mr. Dean
was a carpenter, and kept a grocery store as well, so he could pity the
lumbermen from the shelter of comparative affluence. When he saw the
preacher's wife, he came over to speak to her.

"Well, ma'am," he said, "the dispensations of Providence is indeed
mysterious,--that the river should have been froze last night!"

Mr. Dean had a habit of holding his mouth open a moment before he spoke,
and looking as though he felt that his listener was impatient for his
words, which were always pronounced with great deliberation. Helen had
very little patience with him, and used to answer his slowly uttered
remarks with a quickness which confused him.

"It would be more mysterious if it were not frozen, at this time of
year," she replied, almost before he had finished speaking. She was in
haste to reach Mrs. Davis, and she had no time to hear Elder Dean's
platitudes.