Page:Possession (Roche, February 1923).pdf/273

 Spirit of the lake—long-armed, with streaming hair and blazing eyes; the Spirit of Grimstone—massive, brown, earthy. They laughed and shouted on the cliffs, half in rage, half in ferocious play. Derek laughed to hear them fighting for the land while he lay snug in bed. And Buckskin, in his sleep, laughed too.

Derek did not realize that he had slept, and yet, there was the ruddy sunrise staining the wall and he had never seen the dawn. Where was the wind now? Utter silence and piercing cold. When he raised his head the breath from his nostrils made a little cloud above the quilt. The window was completely covered by downy frost flushed pink by the sun. Sharp cracking sounds came from the old house. He jumped out of bed. His boots which he had taken off wet the night before were frozen to the floor. He jerked them up and pulled them on. Lord, how cold they were! Hurriedly he got into his clothes, put the boy into his three little garments (what a blue bit of a nose!) and carried him to the kitchen. Here the coal fire still burned and one did not feel quite so frozen. He fastened Buckskin into his high chair and made the porridge. While it cooked he went outside, to see what sort of world the storm had left behind.

It was as though a curtain had risen to show him some strange stage scene set in the polar region. No wonder his brain had been filled with wild fancies last night. The storm had done its damnedest, and left behind this white, silent, sinister passivity—all its passion frozen into a glittering picture for remembrance.

The lake was a seething cauldron. From its rocking waves rose endless spirals and columns of vapour, twisting, writhing together, struck into a thousand radiant tints by