where her affections are concerned, she read what was passing in their
minds. Her husband led her back to her couch, where she lay with her
large dark eyes full of trouble, while her lips often moved in prayer.
The thought of her youngest and darling son far off and alone among those
cloud-capped and storm-beaten mountains was terrible to her.

Another hour passed, and still the absent youth did not return. Leonard,
his father, and Amy, often went to the hall window and looked out. The
storm so enhanced the early gloom of the winter afternoon that the
outbuildings, although so near, loomed out only as shadows. The wind was
growing almost fierce in its violence. Webb had so long kept up his
pretence of reading that Amy began in her thoughts to resent his seeming
indifference as cold-blooded. At last he laid down his book, and went
quietly away. She followed him, for it seemed to her that something ought
to be done, and that he was the one to do it. She found him in an upper
chamber, standing by an open window that faced the mountains. Joining
him, she was appalled by the roar of the wind as it swept down from the
wooded heights.

"Oh, Webb," she exclaimed--he started at her words and presence, and
quickly closed the window--"ought not something to be done? The bare
thought that Burt is lost in this awful gloom fills me with horror. The
sound of that wind was like the roar of the ocean in a storm we had. How
can he see in such blinding snow? How could he breast this gale if he
were weary?"

He was silent a moment, looking with contracted brows at the gloomy
scene. At last he began, as if reassuring himself as well as the agitated
girl at his side: