The Shape of Fear | Page 7

to draw him on irresistibly, and finding it sweet to follow, he followed.
Of course it came to him more than once in that strange pursuit, that the white skater was no earthly guide. Up in those latitudes men see curious things when the hoar frost is on the earth. Hagadorn's own father -- to hark no further than that for an instance! -- who lived up there with the Lake Superior Indians, and worked in the copper mines, had welcomed a woman at his hut one bitter night, who was gone by morning, leaving wolf tracks on the snow! Yes, it was so, and John Fontanelle, the half-breed, could tell you about it any day -- if he were alive. (Alack, the snow where the wolf tracks were, is melted now!)
Well, Hagadorn followed the white skater all the night, and when the ice flushed pink at dawn, and arrows of lovely light shot up into the cold heavens, she was gone, and Haga- dorn was at his destination. The sun climbed arrogantly up to his place above all other things, and as Hagadorn took off his skates and glanced carelessly lakeward, he beheld a great wind-rift in the ice, and the waves showing blue and hungry between white fields. Had he rushed along his intended path, watching the stars to guide him, his glance turned upward, all his body at magnificent momentum, he must certainly have gone into that cold grave.
How wonderful that it had been sweet to follow the white skater, and that he followed!
His heart beat hard as he hurried to his friend's house. But he encountered no wed- ding furore. His friend met him as men meet in houses of mourning.
"Is this your wedding face?" cried Haga- dorn. "Why, man, starved as I am, I look more like a bridegroom than you!"
"There's no wedding to-day!"
"No wedding! Why, you're not --"
"Marie Beaujeu died last night --"
"Marie --"
"Died last night. She had been skating in the afternoon, and she came home chilled and wandering in her mind, as if the frost had got in it somehow. She grew worse and worse, and all the time she talked of you."
"Of me?"
"We wondered what it meant. No one knew you were lovers."
"I didn't know it myself; more's the pity. At least, I didn't know --"
"She said you were on the ice, and that you didn't know about the big breaking-up, and she cried to us that the wind was off shore and the rift widening. She cried over and over again that you could come in by the old French creek if you only knew --"
"I came in that way."
"But how did you come to do that? It's out of the path. We thought perhaps --"
But Hagadorn broke in with his story and told him all as it had come to pass.
That day they watched beside the maiden, who lay with tapers at her head and at her feet, and in the little church the bride who might have been at her wedding said prayers for her friend. They buried Marie Beaujeu in her bridesmaid white, and Hagadorn was before the altar with her, as he had intended from the first! Then at midnight the lovers who were to wed whispered their vows in the gloom of the cold church, and walked together through the snow to lay their bridal wreaths upon a grave.
Three nights later, Hagadorn skated back again to his home. They wanted him to go by sunlight, but he had his way, and went when Venus made her bright path on the ice.
The truth was, he had hoped for the com- panionship of the white skater. But he did not have it. His only companion was the wind. The only voice he heard was the bay- ing of a wolf on the north shore. The world was as empty and as white as if God had just created it, and the sun had not yet colored nor man defiled it.

THEIR DEAR LITTLE GHOST
THE first time one looked at Els- beth, one was not prepossessed. She was thin and brown, her nose turned slightly upward, her toes went in just a perceptible degree, and her hair was perfectly straight. But when one looked longer, one perceived that she was a charming little creature. The straight hair was as fine as silk, and hung in funny little braids down her back; there was not a flaw in her soft brown skin, and her mouth was tender and shapely. But her particular charm lay in a look which she habitually had, of seeming to know curious things -- such as it is not allotted to ordinary persons to know. One felt tempted to say to her:
"What are these beautiful things which you know, and of which others are ignorant? What is