Most cheering to the host was the fair progress that his patient made. Her curious mistake that he was Dr. Malbone had given him a mastery of the situation that was of inestimable value. Manifestly she reposed full confidence in his skill, and he made the most of that. She never again asked for opinions concerning her father’s return. Her only inquiries were with regard to the weather, the severity of which did not relax from day to day, from week to week. When Wilder would return from short excursions over the snow, which now lay deep throughout the mountains and was steadily growing deeper, she would look at him a moment expectantly, hoping for good news; but it was not necessary for him to say that there was none, and she asked no questions.
The dread and dismay of Wilder grew with the heaping up of snow about the hut. Before he built the house, he had learned that in winter, when the storms were very severe, the shelf upon which he had reared the structure was banked with snow, but to what height no one had ever ascertained. There had never been such a storm as this within the memory of the white settlers. Hence the snow was heaped higher than ever before. There were special reasons for this. The shelf formed an eddying-point for the wind that came in the intervals of the snowfall, and the snow from all sides was thus swirled and pitched upon the shelf. It had not yet reached the roof, but it had to be kept cleared from the window and the front door, and that meant watchfulness and labor. Should it continue to accumulate until it reached the roof and the top of the chimney, a serious situation would confront the prisoners.
Not while the patient remained helpless was there anything but a rigid business bearing between these two unhappy mortals. Between them was reared an impalpable wall that neither cared to attack. But in time the patient grew better and stronger both in body and mind; and, besides, strange developments began to make themselves felt.
Among the effects of the young woman, Wilder had discovered a book in which she kept a journal. She had called for it as soon as she was able to write; and, as a woman’s observation is keener than a man’s, it is best to introduce here (and in other places throughout the narrative) such extracts from her journal as seem helpful.
CHAPTER SIX
THE following is from the lady’s journal:
“Yes, I will write it again, absurd though it may turn out to be: There is some mystery about this cabin. I have tried over and over to convince myself that my weakness and the unnatural situation in which I am placed make me morbid and suspicious; but I know that I am still a hard-headed woman, without a particle of nonsense in my composition; and I know that I am able to see things in their proper light, and to understand them in a way. And I say that the signs of something wrong here are growing more and more evident, without furnishing me the least clue to the nature of the mystery; but I feel that, whatever the mystery is, it is one to be dreaded. I try not to think about it; but where is the sense in that? Is it not better for me to do all the observing and thinking I can, and thus be the better prepared for whatever may happen.
“I sometimes try to think that it is only the strangeness of this strange man—if I may call him a man—that makes me feel a mystery in the air. It is hard to get hold of anything tangible in his bearing, so unobtrusively alert he is. There must be some explanation of the fact that a physician as skilful as he is should bury himself in these mountains—should hide himself from the different world to which he evidently belongs.