The man on duty touched his cap and disappeared, and from the sound of the Major's laughter within, must have repeated the message verbatim, and a moment later returned.
"Major Dreyer says you may enter;" and then, laughing and shivering, the Major's daughter seized Rachel with one hand, Stuart with the other, and making a quick charge, darted into the ruling presence.
"Oh, you bear!" she said, breaking from her comrades and into the bear's embrace; "to keep us out there—and it so cold! And I came over specially for—"
And then she stopped. The glitter of the sun on the sun had made a glimmer of everything under a roof, and on her entrance she had not noticed a figure opposite her father, until a man rose to his feet and took a step forward as if to go.
"Let me know when you want me, Major," he said; and the voice startled those two muffled figures in the background, for both, by a common impulse, started forward—Rachel throwing back the hood of her jacket and holding out her hand.
"I am glad you have come," she said heartily, and he gripped the offered member with a sort of fierceness as he replied:
"Thank you, Miss."
But his eyes were not on her. The man who had come with her—who still held her gloves in his hand—was the person who seemed to draw all his attention.
"You two are old neighbors, are you not?" remarked the Major. "Fred, my dear, you have met Mr. Genesee, our scout? No? Mr. Genesee, this is my daughter; and this, a friend of ours—Mr. Stuart."
An ugly devil seemed alive in Genesee's eyes, as the younger man came closer, and with an intense, expressive gesture, put out his hand.