Page:Resurrection Rock (1920).pdf/117

 His dark eyes peered about restlessly; and she knew that, whatever Asa had thought when she brought him to the house, now superstitions controlled him. He was remaining close to her and thinking again, undoubtedly, about Bagley who so recently had left because he had had "enough" and of the stories repeated about Resurrection Rock.

Ethel had thought of some physical means being employed,—a blow struck or a shot fired. But might the danger have been more—extraordinary than that? Asa seemed to think so.

She started, seeing a shadow following her on the western wall of the great room. It was her own shadow; light was streaking across the floor, and cold, dazzling beams were striking in through the low windows to the east as the rim of the sun pushed up from the frozen, motionless lake. East and south, as far as Ethel could see, ice and ice and ice extended; all the world in that direction was frozen, limitless ice, smooth and unbroken. Below the ice lay water, above it only sky and sun. Still elements alone bounded Resurrection Rock which seemed set on the very edge of creation, a threshold from warm, vibrant, pulsing life to the realm of that to which souls from cold bodies flow. White, gleaming, spectral shapes arose far away toward the sun and glided now this way and that, the wind drawing up light snowflakes and wafting them to and fro.

Ethel struck her hands together and with a jerk turned around to look out the opposite windows to the near, forested shore where a curl of smoke above the trees marked Asa Redbird's little home where Mrs. Redbird was, undoubtedly, frying breakfast. Farther away she could see St. Florentin; and she thought, not