"You've got to take your toll.
And when you're lying asleep like that, or pretending to, you reach up-
and kill. And yet you can be kind-ah, but you can be kind and beautiful!
But you must have your toll one way or t'other." She sighed and paused;
then, after a moment, looking along the trail--"I don't expect they'll
come to-night, and mebbe not to-morrow, if--if they stay for THAT."
Her eyes closed, she shivered a little. Her lips drew tight, and her
face seemed suddenly to get thinner. "But dad wouldn't--no, he couldn't,
not considerin'--" Again she shut her eyes in pain.
Her face was now turned from the western road by which she had expected
her travellers, and towards the east, where already the snow was taking
on a faint bluish tint, a reflection of the sky deepening nightwards in
that half-circle of the horizon. Distant and a little bleak and
cheerless the half-circle was looking now.
"No one--not for two weeks," she said, in comment on the eastern trail,
which was so little frequented in winter, and this year had been less
travelled than ever. "It would be nice to have a neighbour," she added,
as she faced the west and the sinking sun again. "I get so lonely--just
minutes I get lonely. But it's them minutes that seem to count more than
all the rest when they come.
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