imaginations question and wander in a manner difficult now
to conceive. At certain ages the two sexes are very much
interested in each other, and if this interest is not satisfied
objectively, it will be subjectively.

Snow, if a jailer, was likewise a defence, and apparently
cooled for a time the heat of the little community against the
squire. Even the Rev. Mr. McClave's flame of love and love
of flame were modified by the depth of the drifts he must
struggle through, in order to discourse on eternal torment
while gazing at earthly paradise. Janice became convinced
that the powers of darkness no longer had singled her out as
their particular prey, and in the peaceful isolation of the winter
her woes, when she thought of them, underwent a change
of grammatical tense which suggested that they had become
things of the past.

One of her tormenting factors was not to be so treated.
Philemon alone made nothing of the change of season, riding
the nine miles between his home and Greenwood by daylight
or by moonlight, as if his feeling for the girl not merely
warmed but lighted the devious path between the drifts. Yet
it was not to make love he came; for he sat a silent, awkward
figure when once within doors, speaking readily enough in
response to the elders, but practically inarticulate whenever
called upon to reply to Janice. Her bland unconsciousness
was a barrier far worse than the snow; and never dreaming
that he was momentarily declaring his love for her in a
manner far stronger than words, he believed her wholly ignorant
of what he felt, and stayed for hours at a time, longing