It half slid, half tumbled down
upon them, clumsy and shapeless.
"Let us in," panted Hugh. "Let us in."
Slipping his feet from the straps of his skis, he staggered past them
and they saw that he was carrying a woman in his arms.
CHAPTER III
"Shut the door," Hugh whispered, and laid his burden down on a big
black bear-hide near the stove. He knelt beside it. He had no eyes
for anything else. Pete, hobbling to him, gazed curiously down, and
Bella knelt opposite and drew away Hugh's mackinaw coat, with which
he had wrapped his trove. It was not a woman whom they looked down
upon, but a girl, and very young--perhaps not yet seventeen--a girl
with cropped dark curly hair and a face so wan and blue and at the
same time so scorched by the snow-glare that its exquisiteness of
feature was all the more marked. Hugh's handkerchief was tied loosely
across her eyes.
"I heard her crying in the snow," he said with ineffable tenderness;
"crying like a little bleating lamb with cold and pain and hunger
and fright--the most pitiful thing in God's cruel trap of life. She's
blind--snow-blind."
Pete gave a sharp exclamation, and Bella gently removed the
handkerchief.
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