Page:Cornelia Meigs-The Pirate of Jasper Peak.djvu/242

 and her husband, just how ugly a deed they had accomplished between them.

She had learned more of the gravity of the matter when Hugh went through Two Rivers to  seek help from Oscar Dansk; she had sat brooding by the fire day after day, more and more repentant yet never knowing what to do. She had finally come through the forest to learn for herself how matters stood and had arrived the night  of the fire, just before the storm. She had been imprisoned in the cabin with Jake during those  five days of fierce snowfall and she made Hugh  understand, even in her halting English, that it  was much the same as being within the same four  walls with a madman. Her husband had returned to Two Rivers, so that she was alone with Jake and must listen hour after hour to the tumult  of words that she scarcely understood. All his hopes of holding the valley, of keeping Oscar  from establishing his claim, of proving that no  one could successfully defy him, all this must  stand or fall by whether the boys could hold the  cottage and Oscar Dansk could register his claim.