crooked mirror and had fashioned a form to match the distorted image.
Hugh wouldn't, couldn't force himself to be inconspicuous. He would
swagger; he would talk loud; his big, beautiful voice would challenge
attention, create an audience. He would have some impossible, splendid
tale to tell.

Pete sat up straighter in his chair, gingerly rearranging the ankle,
and lifted his blue and haunted eyes--the eyes of the North--to the
window.

The dazzle of noon had faded to a glow. The short winter day was
nearly done. There would be a long violet twilight, and then, the
blaze of stars.

But for his aching ankle Pete would be sliding out on soundless skis,
now poised for breathless flight down some long slope, now leaping
fallen trees or buried ditches. He spent half of his wild young
restlessness in such long night runs when, in a sort of ecstasy, he
outraced the stifled longings of his exiled youth. But there would
be no ski-running for several nights now. He was a prisoner, and at
a time when imprisonment was hard to bear.

If only there were some way of getting quick news of Hugh! Why had
Bella and he let this thing happen? Why had they stood helplessly
by and allowed the rash fool to go singing to his own destruction?
They might have held him by force, if not by argument, long enough
to bring him to his senses. They had been weak; they were always weak
before Hugh's magnetic strength--always the audience, the following;
Bella, for all her devastating tongue, no less than himself. And
Hugh's liberty, perhaps his life, might be the price of their