He sauntered slowly down the road until he saw that it led directly to the house and ended in the yard . Then he turned off in a narrow path to the shore . He was not far from the house now and he scanned it observantly as he went past . The barrens swept almost up to its door in front but at the side , sheltered from the lake winds by the pines , was a garden where there was a fine show of gay tulips and golden daffodils . No living creature was visible and , in spite of the blossoming geraniums and muslin curtains at the windows and the homely spiral of smoke , the place had a lonely , almost untenanted , look . When Alan reached the shore he found that it was of a much more open and less rocky nature than the part which he had been used to frequent . The beach was of sand and the scrub barrens dwindled down to it almost insensibly . To right and left fir-fringed points ran out into the lake , shaping a little cove with the house in its curve . Alan walked slowly towards the left headland , intending to follow the shore around to the other road . As he passed the point he stopped short in astonishment . The second surprise and mystery of the evening confronted him . A little distance away a girl was standing -- a girl who turned a startled face at his unexpected appearance . Alan Douglas had thought he knew all the girls in Rexton , but this lithe , glorious creature was a stranger to him . She stood with her hand on the head of a huge , tawny collie dog ; another dog was sitting on his haunches beside her . She was tall , with a great braid of shining chestnut hair , showing ruddy burnished tints where the sunlight struck it , hanging over her shoulder . The plain dark dress she wore emphasized the grace and strength of her supple form . Her face was oval and pale , with straight black brows and a finely cut crimson mouth -- a face whose beauty bore the indefinable stamp of race and breeding mingled with a wild sweetness , as of a flower growing in some lonely and inaccessible place . None of the Rexton girls looked like that . Who , in the name of all that was amazing , could she be ? As the thought crossed Alan 's mind the girl turned , with an air of indifference that might have seemed slightly overdone to a calmer observer than was the young minister at that moment and , with a gesture of command to her dogs , walked quickly away into the scrub spruces .
She was so tall that her uncovered head was visible over them as she followed some winding footpath , and Alan stood like a man rooted to the ground XXXXX he saw her enter the grey house .
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