She caught hold of a stone to steady herself and turned toward the unmarked mound. Her feet almost refused to move, one final effort! It grew light again! Joy! The sheaf of rye seemed to part and open a way before her, revealing Waldsen standing on the threshold of the Hill House—would he close the door without seeing her? Casting herself forward, she cried, “Wait, beloved, I am coming!” and then all was warmth and light.
In the morning Margaret did not call Andrea when she first awoke. “Day will come to her soon enough,” she said. An hour later she went to the empty room and then, finding the bed untouched, searched the house in vain. Calling the Deacon, he suggested that Andrea might have gone to the Hill House, but there were no footsteps in the snow to guide them, for it had drifted all night.
A party of neighbours quickly formed; the men strode about, probing the drifts with sticks, while the women looked anxiously from their windows.
Margaret went to the attic room, where she could see the country on all sides. Something fluttered above the snow between the white stones on the hill, where the wind had swept bare places. In a moment she had gone out and called the nearest of the searchers, who chanced to be her father, and together they climbed the hill.
Pillowed by the rye knelt Andrea, her eyes turned skyward, a smile upon her parted lips, while above her the meadowlarks flocked and the buntings murmured as they made their Christmas feast from Gurth’s sheaf.
“We need not tell her now,” was all that Margaret said.
FINIS
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