Nobody spoke at first, as though we had been covered with confusion. His
arrival was fiery, but his white bulk, of indefinite shape and without
features, made him loom up like a man of snow.

"The captain here has been telling me . . ." Hermann began in a homely
and amicable voice; and Falk had a low, nervous laugh. His cool,
negligent undertone had no inflexions, but the strength of a powerful
emotion made him ramble in his speech. He had always desired a home.
It was difficult to live alone, though he was not answerable. He was
domestic; there had been difficulties; but since he had seen Hermann's
niece he found that it had become at last impossible to live by himself.
"I mean--impossible," he repeated with no sort of emphasis and only with
the slightest of pauses, but the word fell into my mind with the force
of a new idea.

"I have not said anything to her yet," Hermann observed quietly. And
Falk dismissed this by a "That's all right. Certainly. Very proper."
There was a necessity for perfect frankness--in marrying, especially.
Hermann seemed attentive, but he seized the first opportunity to ask us
into the cabin. "And by-the-by, Falk," he said innocently, as we passed
in, "the timber came to no less than forty-seven dollars and fifty
cents."

Falk, uncovering his head, lingered in the passage. "Some other time,"
he said; and Hermann nudged me angrily--I don't know why. The girl alone
in the cabin sat sewing at some distance from the table. Falk stopped
short in the doorway. Without a word, without a sign, without the
slightest inclination of his bony head, by the silent intensity of his
look alone, he seemed to lay his herculean frame at her feet. Her hands