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The old man stopped, for there came to them now, clearly, the sound of sleigh-bells. They all stood still for an instant, silent and attentive, then Aunt Kate moved toward the door.

“Cassy’s come,” she said. “Cassy and George’s boy’ve come.”

Another instant and the door was opened on the beautiful, white, sparkling world, and the low sleigh, with its great, warm, buffalo robes, in which the small figures of a woman and a child were almost lost, stopped at the door. Two whimsical but tired eyes looked over a rim of fur at the old woman in the doorway, then Cassy’s voice rang out:

“Hello! that’s Aunt Kate, I know! Well, here we are, and here’s my boy. Jump, George!”

A moment later and the gaunt old woman folded both mother and son in her arms and drew them into the room. The door was shut, and they all faced one another.

The old man and Black Andy did not move, but stood staring at the trim figure in black, with the plain face, large mouth, and tousled red hair, and the dreamy-eyed, handsome little boy beside her.

Black Andy stood behind the stove, looking over at the new-comers with quizzical, almost furtive eyes, and his father remained for a moment with mouth open, gazing at his dead son’s wife and child, as though not quite comprehending the scene. The sight of the boy had brought back, in some strange, embarrassing way, a vision of thirty years before, when George was a little boy in buckskin pants and jacket, and was beginning to ride the prairie with him. This boy was like George, yet not like him. The face was George’s, the sensuous, luxurious mouth; but the eyes were not those of a Baragar, nor yet those of Aunt Kate’s family; and they were not wholly like the mother’s. They were full and brimming, while hers were small and whimsical; yet they had her quick, humorous flashes and her quaintness.

“Have I changed so much? Have you forgotten me?” Cassy asked, looking the old man in the eyes. “You look as strong as a bull.” She held out her hand to him and laughed.

“Hope I see you well,” said Abel Baragar, mechanically, as he took the hand and shook it awkwardly.

“Oh, I’m all right,” answered the nonchalant little woman, undoing her jacket. “Shake hands with your grandfather, George. That’s right–don’t talk too much,” she added, with a half-nervous little laugh, as the old man, with a kind of fixed smile, and the child shook hands in silence.

Presently she saw Black Andy behind the stove. “Well, Andy, have you been here ever since?” she asked, and, as he came forward, she suddenly caught him by both arms, stood on tiptoe, and kissed him. “Last time I saw you, you were behind the stove at Lumley’s. Nothing’s ever too warm for you,” she added. “You’d be shivering on the equator. You were always hugging the stove at Lumley’s.”

“Things were pretty warm there, too, Cassy,” he said, with a sidelong look at his father.

She saw the look, her face flushed with sudden temper, then her eyes fell on her boy, now lost in the arms of Aunt Kate, and she curbed herself.

“There were plenty of things doing at Lumley’s in those days,” she said, brusquely. “We were all young and fresh then,” she added, and then something seemed to catch her voice, and she coughed a little–a hard, dry, feverish cough. “Are the Lumleys all right? Are they still there, at the Forks?” she asked, after the little paroxysm of coughing.

“Cleaned out–all scattered. We own the Lumleys’ place now,” replied Black Andy, with another sidelong glance at his father, who, as he put some more wood on the fire and opened the damper of the stove wider, grimly watched and listened.

“Jim, and Lance, and Jerry, and Abner?” she asked, almost abstractedly.

“Jim’s dead–shot by a U. S. marshal by mistake for a smuggler,” answered Black Andy, suggestively. “Lance is up on the Yukon, busted; Jerry is one of our hands on the place; and Abner is in jail.”