Thorpe was awakened a long time before daylight by the ringing of a noisy bell.

He dressed, shivering, and stumbled down stairs to a round stove, big as a boiler, into which the cripple dumped huge logs of wood from time to time.

After breakfast Thorpe returned to this stove and sat half dozing for what seemed to him untold ages.

The cold of the north country was initiating him.
Men came in, smoked a brief pipe, and went out.

Shearer was one of them.
The woodsman nodded curtly to the young man, his cordiality quite gone.
Thorpe vaguely wondered why.