Shut in all of that winter, throughout which spells of bitter cold had alternated with blinding blizzards, dissipated only by the tempering warmth of Chinook winds, Nettie and Mrs. Langdon were thrown upon their own resources, and drew closer together.

As the winter deepened, something of the girl's strange depression reacted upon the spirits of the sick woman, so that she, too, lapsed into long spells of silence. She would lie on the couch in the dining-living room close to the radiator, propped up high with the pillows Nettie piled around her, her book on Health and Happiness held loosely in her thin hands, as over and over again she conned its lessons, beautiful lessons in which surely no one who read, could fail to find that crumb of hope and comfort that means so much to the hungry heart.

Occasionally her attention would stray from her beloved book, and then she would lie there idly and absently watching the silent Nettie, as she moved about her duties. One day, watching her more intently than usual, and puzzling over the change in the formerly lighthearted and happy girl, something about her movements, a certain lassitude, brought Mrs. Langdon's thoughts to an abrupt pause. At first she put the idea from her as fantastic and impossible; but moving round the better to scrutinize the girl, she knew she had made no mistake. The book slipped from her hand. Mrs. Langdon sat up on her couch, and stared with a startled gaze at Nettie Day. The fall of the book caused the girl to turn from her work, and as she stooped to pick it up, she met her mistress's eyes.

"Come here, Nettie. I want to speak to you."

Nettie advanced slowly, instinctively holding back, and in her unquiet heart there stirred a dread of the question she knew was trembling on her mistress's lips. Mrs. Langdon's eyes rose steadily, as she scanned the girl from head to foot.

"Nettie, you are in trouble!"

Nettie could not speak for the tightness in her throat and held her dry lips pressed together.

"Oh, you poor child! You poor little girl! Why didn't you tell me before? Now I understand!"

Nettie moved around sideways, averting her gaze from those eyes so full of compassion and tenderness.

"Mrs. Langdon," she said in a low voice, "I done nothing wrong."

"Oh, Nettie! Don't deny it, dear. I can see for myself. Sit beside me, dear. I am not condemning you. I only want your confidence. Tell me all about it, Nettie."

"I can't tell you, Mrs. Langdon! I can't. It's something can never be told you."

Nettie was past that stage where tears would have relieved her. All of her senses seemed numbed and hardened, but she clung persistently to the one passionate purpose, to hide the truth, at all costs, from Mrs. Langdon.

Of all who had known Bull Langdon, his wife alone, despite her cruel experiences with him over the years, did not hate him. To her, he was an erring child, who had started on the wrong trail, and went, misguided and blind, stumbling on in the darkness, never finding his way to that peaceful haven of thought that had been his wife's comfort and refuge. Incapable of evil herself, she had the child's simple faith in the goodness of others, or in their ultimate regeneration from wrong, or error, as she preferred to call it. She never wavered in her faith that sooner or later her "lost lamb" would return to the fold.

It was probable that only her strange faith in the Bull had kept him from doing her physical harm. Harsh and gruff and neglectful, he had never been actually cruel to her, and to himself he liked to boast defiantly that he had "never raised his hand" to his wife.

Now, as she begged for Nettie's confidence, she never dreamed of connecting her husband with the girl's trouble; that was a crime she never could have suspected.

"Do you realize, Nettie, what is about to happen to you?"

"I expect you'll want to turn me out now," said Nettie dully, and then turning swiftly, she added with sudden force: "But don't do it till the spring, Mrs. Langdon, because you ain't strong enough to do the work this winter, and it's nothing to me, and I want to stay and take care of you."

"Don't you know me better than that? Turn your face around, Nettie. Do you think I'm the kind of woman to turn a girl out because she is going to be what I have all my life longed to be—a mother?"

"Don't! Oh, don't, don't!" cried the girl, loudly, rocking to and fro in tearless anguish. "I wisht I were dead. I wisht I'd had the nerve to drown myself in the Ghost River, but now it's all froze over."

"It's wicked to talk in that way. Why should you wish to drown yourself? I am not judging you. I only want to help you. Things are clear to me now. Cyril——"

"Please don't, Mrs. Langdon——"

"Don't what?"

"Don't speak his name even."

"Why not? Why should you carry this burden alone? If there's any blame, it belongs to him, not you."

"No! No! He never done anything wrong. He's not capable of doing wrong to a girl. Please don't say anything about him. I can't bear it!"

"But we must face this thing fairly. You are in an abnormal condition of mind. It's not an uncommon thing. Some women lose their minds at this time. I appreciate all that you have been suffering, and I pity you from the very bottom of my heart."

Nettie said nothing now, but she wrung her hands and clenched them together as if in physical pain.

"Listen to me, Nettie dear. I want you to know that I know what it means to be as you are." Her voice dropped to a wistful whisper. "Eight times, dear, just think of that. You know we pioneered in the early days. We didn't always have a grand place like this, and—and—well, in those days the distances were so great. We were so far from everything—it was just as if we were on the end of the world, and we didn't have the conveniences, or even vehicles to carry us places, and the doctors always came too late, or not at all. I lost all of my babies. They just came into the world to—to go out again; but I always thought that even the weakest of them had not lived in vain, because you see, they brought something lovely into my life. It was just as if—as if—an angel's wing had touched me, don't you see? It brought to me a knowledge of Love—love eternal and everlasting. No woman who bears a child can fail to feel it."

She broke off, in strange, breathless, smiling pause, as if she sought to conquer her present pain with the elusive joy that she believed had come with her dead children into her life. "So you see, Nettie, I don't hold anything against any woman who bears a child, no matter how or where. It doesn't matter what you or Cyril have done. I have great faith in that boy, and I feel he will make it right."

"Mrs. Langdon," said Nettie in a suffocating voice, "I ask you not to believe that he is to blame for anything wrong about me."

"I won't, then. I'll believe the best of you both. We are going to be very happy, all of us. Just think, you are going to be a mother! It's the sublimest feeling in life. I know it, because all my life I've heard baby voices in my ears and in my heart, Nettie, and my arms have ached and yearned to press a little baby to my breast. My own dear little ones have passed, but, Nettie, I'll hold yours, won't I, dear?"

"Oh, Mrs. Langdon, when you talk like that, I feel just as if something was bursting all up inside me. I don't know what to do."

"Do nothing, dear; but look out at God's beautiful world. Lift your eyes to the skies, to the sun, to the hills' hills!"

"There's no sun no more," said Nettie. "The days are all dark and cold now, and the hills are all froze, too. They're like me, Mrs. Langdon. I'm all froze up inside."

"Oh, but you'll change now. Look, Nettie, it won't be long before they'll be back—my husband and your Cyril. I had a letter. Where is it, now? I put it in my book—no, under my pillow. See, what they write." The paper fluttered in her hand, and she looked up to smile at Nettie. "It was thoughtful of Bill, wasn't it, to have the letter typed? You know he hates to write letters. Poor fellow hasn't much of an education—You know, Nettie, he came to the school when I was teaching, to learn. It was pathetic, really it was. But now, he's had some stenographer write to tell me that they'll be home in a couple of weeks. They should have been home two months ago, but they've had a terrible time of it in the States. You see there's a kind of sickness over there—a plague that's running around. It's all over Europe and now the States. People, he writes, are afraid to go to public places, and everything is closed up. It's a great disappointment for him, poor fellow. He expected so much from the Prince, and he's hung on from week to week, and been through all sorts of aggravating times. You know they even quarantined his herd on a false suspicion of disease, when they were in perfect health. But, never mind, we have to have disappointments in life. All I'm thankful for now is that he's coming back—he and Cyril."

Nettie said in a low voice:

"Mrs. Langdon, I don't want to see neither of them again. I can't."

"That's the way you feel now. It's natural in your condition. I had notions, too. Wanted the strangest things to eat, and had such fits of crying about nothing at all. You'll be all over these moods by the time Cyril rides in. My! I'm going to scold that boy. Yes, yes, you may be angry if you want, but I'm going to give him a real piece of my mind, and then—well, it's never too late to mend a wrong, Nettie."

"Mrs. Langdon," said Nettie violently, "I tell you Cyril Stanley never done me no wrong."

"Well, that's how you look at it, Nettie, and maybe you are right. I'm the last person to judge you."

Nettie bent down suddenly and grasping Mrs. Langdon's thin hand tightly, she kissed it. Then as quickly dropping it, she got up, threw her apron over her face and ran from the room.