sped along fast over the creaking snow, still holding the knife clutched fast in her hand. She began to lilt again as she went, and again Burr and Dorothy danced together before her eyes. She passed Parson Fair's house, and the best-room windows were lighted. She thought that Burr was there, and she lilted more loudly the Virginia reel.
After Parson Fair's house was some time left behind, and she had come into the lengthy stretch of road, she saw a shadowy figure ahead. She could not at first tell whether it was moving towards or from her—whether it was a man or a woman; or, indeed, whether it were not a forest tree encroaching on the road and moving in the wind. She kept on swiftly, holding her knife under her cloak. She had stopped singing.
Presently she saw that the figure was a man, and coming her way; and then her heart stood still, for she knew by the swing of his shoulders that it was Burr Gordon. She threw back her proud head and sped along towards him, grasping her knife under her cloak and looking neither to the right nor left. She swerved not her eyes a hair's-breadth when she came close to him—so close that their shoulders almost touched in passing in the narrow path.
Suddenly there was a quick sigh in her ear—“Oh, Madelon!” Then an arm was flung around her waist and hot lips were pressed to her own.
The mixed blood of two races, in which action is quick to follow impulse, surged up to Madelon's head. She drew the hand which held the knife from under her cloak and struck. “Kiss me again, Burr Gordon, if you dare!” she cried out, and her cry was met by a groan as he fell away from her into the snow.
Chapter IV
Madelon stood for a second looking at the dark, prostrate form as one of her Iroquois ancestors might have looked at a fallen foe before he drew his scalping-knife; then suddenly the surging of the savage blood in her ears grew faint. She fell down on her knees beside him. “Have I killed you, Burr?” she said, and bent her face down to his—and it was not Burr, but Lot Gordon!
The white, peaked face smiled up at her out of the snow. “You haven't killed me if I die, since you took me for Burr,” whispered Lot Gordon.
“Are you much hurt?”
“I—don't know. The knife has gone a little way into my side. It has not reached my heart, but that was hurt unto death already by life, so this matters not.”
Madelon felt along his side and hit the handle of the clasp-knife, firmly fixed.
“Don't try to draw it out—you cannot,” said Lot, and his pain forced a groan from him. “I'll live, if I can, till the wound is healed for the sake of your peace. I'd be content to die of it, since you gave it in vengeance for another man's kiss, if it were not for you. But they shall never know—they shall never—know.” Lot's voice died away in a faint murmur between his parted lips; his eyes stared up with no meaning in them at the wintry stars.
Madelon ran back on the road to the village, taking great leaps through the snow, straining her eyes ahead. Now and then she cried out hoarsely, as if she really saw some one, “Hullo! hullo!” At the curve of the road she turned a headlong corner and ran roughly against a man who was hurrying towards her; and this time it was Burr Gordon.
Burr reeled back with the shock; then his face peered into hers with fear and wonder. “Is it you?” he stammered out. “What is the matter?”
But Madelon caught his arm in a hard grip. “Come, quick!” she gasped, and pulled him along the road after her.
“What is the matter?” Burr demanded, half yielding and half resisting.
Madelon faced him suddenly as they sped along. “I met your cousin Lot just below here and he kissed me, and I took him for you and stabbed him, if you must know,” she sobbed out, dryly.
Burr gave a choking cry of horror.
“I think I—have killed him,” said she, and pulled him on faster.
“And you meant to kill me?”
“Yes, I did.”
“I wish to God you had!” Burr cried out, with a sudden fierce anger at himself and her; and now he hurried on faster than she.
Lot was quite motionless when they reached him. Burr threw himself down in the snow and leaned his ear to his cousin's heart. Madelon stood over them, panting. Suddenly a merry roulade of whistling broke the awful stillness. Two men were coming down the road whistling “Roy's Wife of Alidivalloch” as clearly soft and sweet as flutes, accented with human gayety and mirth.
On came the merry whistlers. Burr sprang up and grasped Madelon Hautville's arm. “He isn't dead,” he whispered, hoarsely. “Somebody's coming. Go home, quick!”
But Madelon looked at him with despairing obstinacy. “I'll stay,” said she.
“I tell you, go! Somebody is coming. I'll get help. I'll send for the doctor. Go home!”
“No!”
“Oh, Madelon, if you have ever loved me, go home!”
Madelon turned away at that. “I'll be there when they come for me,” said she, and went swiftly down the road and out of sight in the converging distance of trees, with the snow muffling her footsteps.
When she reached home she groped her way into the living-room, which was lighted only by the low, red gleam of the coals on the hearth. Her father's gruff voice called out from the bedroom beyond: “That you, Madelon?”
“Yes,” said she, and lighted a candle at the coals.
“Have the boys come?”
“No.”
Madelon went up the steep stairs to her chamber, but before she opened her door her brother Louis's voice, broken with pain, besought her to come into his room and bathe his sprained shoulder for him. She went in, set the candle on the table, and rubbed in the cider-brandy and wormwood without a word. Louis, in the midst of his pain, kept looking up wonderingly at his sister's face. It looked as if it were frozen. She did not seem to see him. Nothing about her seemed alive but her gently moving hands.
Suddenly he gave a startled cry. “What's that? Have you cut your hand, Madelon?” Madelon glanced at her hand, and there was a broad red stain over the palm and three of her fingers.
“No,” said she, and went on rubbing.
“But it looks like blood!” cried Louis, knitting his pale brows at her.
Madelon made no reply.
“Madelon, what is that on your hand?”
“Blood.”
“How came it there?”
“You'll know to-morrow.” Madelon put the stopper in the cider-brandy and wormwood bottle; then she covered up the wounded arm and went out.
“Madelon, what is it? What is the matter? What ails you?” Louis called after her.
“You'll know to-morrow,” said she, and shut her chamber door, which was nearly opposite Louis's. His youngest
