With the shovel Bob pushed the door inward. The cabin would have been
quite dark had it not been for a little fire crackling on the hearth. Over
this a figure stooped--huddled, it seemed, for warmth. The room was almost
bare.
"Why, you poor thing!" Betty cried, running into the hut. "Are you here
all alone?"
She had seen instantly that it was a girl. And evidently the stranger was
in much misery. But at Betty's cry she started up from the hearth and
whirled about in both fear and surprise.
Her hair was disarranged, and there was a great deal of it. Her face was
swollen with weeping, and she was all but blinded by her tears. At Betty's
sympathetic tone and words she burst out crying again. Betty gathered her
right into her arms--or, as much of her as she could enfold, for the other
girl was bigger than Betty in every way.
"You?" gasped the crying girl. "How--how did you come up here? And in all
this snow? Oh, this is a wilderness--a wilderness! How do people ever live
here, even in the summer? It is dreadful--dreadful! And I thought I should
freeze."
"Ida Bellethorne!" gasped Betty.
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