An instant later, Madge never knew why, the dogs were snarling in a fight. In a moment Stefan was among them, wielding his short-handled and long-lashed whip. A trace was broken. By the time the damage was repaired and the dogs pacified some ten minutes or more had been wasted. The man looked at his watch.
“I ain’t got so much time left,” he said. “I got to hurry back for Mis’ Carew. Lucky ve’re most dere now.”
A few seconds after they had started again they came to an opening, towards which Stefan pointed, and the girl’s heart sank within her.
She saw nothing of the distant falls surrounded 100 by a growth in which every twig scintillated with the frost lavished by the river’s vapor. She never noticed the great circular pool with its deep banks, or the wonderful view, far across country, of mountains washed in pale blues and lavenders, of the sun-flooded bright expanse of open ground, partly fenced in with axe-hewn rails. She could only stare at a little shack, the smallest she had seen in that country, and at the thread of smoke coming from the length of stove-pipe protruding from the ice-covered roof, and to her it looked like the home of misery.
A few yards farther on the team stopped. From here the hut could only be faintly distinguished through a growth of birches and firs.
“You can get off de toboggan now, leddy,” Stefan told her. “I puts off your trunk too. Hugo he come and get it. I call to him.”
She rose to her feet, speechless, amazed, with fear causing a terrible throbbing in her throat. She would have protested but could not find her voice. As soon as Stefan had unlashed the trunk and put it down on the frozen ground he turned his team around.
“Oh! Hugo!” he bellowed. “Oh! Hugo! Here’s de leddy.”
For an instant there was no reply, but while 101 Stefan yelled again she saw, through a small opening in the interlaced branches, that the door opened. A huge dog came out and rolled in the snow, barking. The man waved a hand.
“I can’t vait a moment. Good-by, leddy, I must go. You tell Hugo why I hurry so.”