There was a fresh element in his dreamy bliss as he resumed his seat before the fire, a sense of something high and tranquillizing like the clear stars, yet touching the spring of tears. His head drooped in the drowsy warmth, he surrendered himself to voluptuous sadness, and the outside world grew faint and fading.
When he looked up again his heart almost ceased to beat. At his side loomed a strange female figure, her head covered with a drab shawl that hid her face. She stood in great snow-shoes as on a pair of pedestals, and the log walls repeated her form in contorted shadow.
The gentle purring of the fire, the Indian boy’s breathing, sounded painfully in the weird stillness. From without came the manifold rustle of the night.
“Who are you?” he whispered.
“Give me a glass of water,” she replied, sweetly.
“I hev’n’t any water,” he breathed.
“I am afire with thirst,” she cried. “Quench me! quench me!” Her shawl slipped back, revealing a face of wild, uncanny beauty crowned with an aureola of golden hair. But the awesome thrill that had permeated Matt’s being passed into one of æsthetic pleasure mingled with astonished recognition.
“Why, it’s Mad Peggy!” he murmured.
“Aye, it’s the Water-Drinker!” assented the beautiful visitor, in soft, musical tones, thereupon crying out, “Water, water, for God’s sake!”
“I hev’n’t any water, I tell you. Not till I git some from the spring in the mornin’. Hev some sap!”