But he refused her, standing before her, blocking the stable door, looking aside with a kind of timid doggedness.

"Can't let ye have another horse to-day nohow," said he; "too cold to let 'em out." "I'll pay you well," said Madelon.
"Pay ain't no object.

Can't let none of 'em out but the stage-horses in no sech weather as this." Still Dexter Beers did not look at Madelon's stern and angry eyes; he gazed intently at a post in an icy slant of snow in the yard on the left.
He had the usual masculine dread of an angry woman, and, moreover, he had a sharp-tongued wife, but he had also the masculine tenacity of a position.

He stared at the post as if his spirit held fast to it, and braced itself against the torrent of feminine wrath which he expected; but it did not come.

Madelon Hautville set her mouth hard, wrapped her red cloak around her with a firm gesture, as if she were a soldier about to start on a long march, and walked out of the yard and up the road without another word.
"I swan!" said Dexter Beers.
The red-faced hostler approached with a pail in each hand bound for the well; he was watering the coach-horses for the next relay.
"What's up ?" he inquired, pushing past him.
"I'll be darned if I don't believe that gal of Hautville's has started to walk to Kingston, 'cause I wouldn't let her have another horse!" "Let her go it," droned the red-faced man, with a short chuckle.
"Hope she won't freeze her feet nor nothin'," said Dexter Beers, uneasily.
"Let her _go_ it!" said the red-faced man, swinging across the yard with his pails.
Madelon Hautville walked on steadily.