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The storm raged violently as Hays emerged from the last of a long range of outbuildings and sheds, and crossed the open space between him and the farmhouse. Before he had reached the porch, with its scant shelter, he had floundered through a snowdrift, and faced the full fury of the storm. But the snow seemed to have glanced from his hard angular figure as it had from his roof-ridge, for when he entered the narrow hall-way his pilot jacket was unmarked, except where a narrow line of powdered flakes outlined the seams as if worn. To the right was an apartment, half office, half sitting-room, furnished with a dark and chilly iron safe, a sofa and chairs covered with black and coldly shining horsehair. Here Hays not only removed his upper coat but his under one also, and drawing a chair before the fire sat down in his shirt-sleeves. It was his usual rustic pioneer habit, and might have been some lingering reminiscence of certain remote ancestors to whom clothes were an impediment. He was warming his hands and placidly ignoring his gaunt arms in their thinly-clad “hickory” sleeves, when a young girl of eighteen sauntered, half perfunctorily, half inquisitively into the room. It was his only remaining daughter. Already elected by circumstances to a dry household virginity, her somewhat large features, sallow complexion, and tasteless, unattractive dress, did not obviously suggest a sacrifice. Since her sister’s departure she had taken sole charge of her father’s domestic affairs and the few rude servants he employed, with a certain inherited following of his own moods and methods. To the neighbors she was known as “Miss Hays,”–a dubious respect that, in a community of familiar “Sallies,” “Mamies,” “Pussies,” was grimly prophetic. Yet she rejoiced in the Oriental appellation of “Zuleika.” To this it is needless to add that it was impossible to conceive any one who looked more decidedly Western.

“Ye kin put some things in my carpet bag agin the time the sled comes round,” said her father meditatively, without looking up.

“Then you’re not coming back tonight?” asked the girl curiously. “What’s goin’ on at the summit, father?”

“I am,” he said grimly. “You don’t reckon I kalkilate to stop thar! I’m going on as far as Horseley’s to close up that contract afore the weather changes.”

“I kinder allowed it was funny you’d go to the hotel to-night. There’s a dance there; those two Wetherbee girls and Mamie Harris passed up the road an hour ago on a wood-sled, nigh blown to pieces and sittin’ up in the snow like skeert white rabbits.”

Hays’ brow darkened heavily.

“Let ’em go,” he said, in a hard voice that the fire did not seem to have softened. “Let ’em go for all the good their fool-parents will ever get outer them, or the herd of wayside cattle they’ve let them loose among.

“I reckon they haven’t much to do at home, or are hard put for company, to travel six miles in the snow to show off their prinkin’ to a lot of idle louts shiny with bear’s grease and scented up with doctor’s stuff,” added the girl, shrugging her shoulders, with a touch of her father’s mood and manner.

Perhaps it struck Hays at that moment that her attitude was somewhat monstrous and unnatural for one still young and presumably like other girls, for, after glancing at her under his heavy brows, he said, in a gentler tone:–

“Never YOU mind, Zuly. When your brother Jack comes home he’ll know what’s what, and have all the proper New York ways and style. It’s nigh on three years now that he’s had the best training Dr. Dawson’s Academy could give,–sayin’ nothing of the pow’ful Christian example of one of the best preachers in the States. They mayn’t have worldly, ungodly fandangoes where he is, and riotous livin’, and scarlet abominations, but I’ve been told that they’ve ‘tea circles,’ and ‘assemblies,’ and ‘harmony concerts’ of young folks–and dancin’–yes, fine square dancin’ under control. No, I ain’t stinted him in anythin’. You kin remember that, Zuleika, when you hear any more gossip and backbitin’ about your father’s meanness. I ain’t spared no money for him.”