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 herself betray till she and he lived in the closeness of marriage; and he stared at his daughter and realized: "She has those feelings for him. She has more even than she's shown him. She's—like that!" And he could not bear to think any longer. He went and helped the boys with the boat.

When they reached the water, and launched the boat, he prevented his daughter from stepping aboard. "No; you stay here." So Lan and Bill Fraser went alone.

Alice climbed to the top of a hummock and slowly moved her torch back and forth before her.

It became almost unbearable to Sothron to watch his girl standing there, stretched upon tiptoe to reach as high as possible with her light and then bringing it low to the snow and next drawing it from right to left before her breast. Sothron had come to understand: "She's trying to make him think of her."

At moments, hatred of Dave Herrick seized Sothron and he defied David's power over his girl. "Let him go to whoever he likes." Then Sothron would pray: "He has to come back to her! He has to come back to my girl!"

Alice had no idea how long she remained out upon the ice. The night divided itself into a period while the row-boat searched and she watched the movement of its light as it worked this way and that between the floes and another period after the boat had come in and her father had sent for a tug from Chicago.

At some time before midnight, they were all back in the house—all but Fidelia and David. They were all having coffee and hot supper; the odor reached Alice