and the sky was even clearing; ragged clouds scurried before the wind and, opening, showed the moon.
Constance hurried westward and then north, following the bend of the shore. The figure of a man—one of the shore patrols—pacing the ice hummocks of the beach and staring out upon the lake, appeared vaguely in the dusk when she had gone about two miles. He seemed surprised at seeing a girl, but less surprised when he had recognized her. Mr. Spearman, he told her, was to the north of them upon the beach somewhere, he did not know how far; he could not leave his post to accompany her, but he assured her that there were men stationed all along the shore. She came, indeed, three quarters of a mile farther on, to a second man; about an equal distance beyond, she found a third, but passed him and went on.
Her legs ached now with the unaccustomed travel upon snowshoes; the cold, which had been only a piercing chill at first, was stopping feeling, almost stopping thought. When clouds covered the moon, complete darkness came; she could go forward only slowly then or must stop and wait; but the intervals of moonlight were growing longer and increasing in frequency. As the sky cleared, she went forward quickly for many minutes at a time, straining her gaze westward over the tumbling water and the floes. It came to her with terrifying apprehension that she must have advanced at least three miles since she had seen the last patrol; she could not have passed any one in the moonlight without seeing him, and in the dark intervals she had advanced so little that she could not have missed one that way either.
She tried to go faster as she realized this; but now
