voted mother; a healthy baby and one's own "Home,
sweet Home."

[Illustration: Baby Helen playing in the fields]

CHAPTER III.

"The Wreck."

Gradually I regained the use of my one-time totally frozen limbs, and
when I felt myself able to do the severe labor required of men who toil
upon a railroad section to earn their daily bread, I begged Foreman
McDonald to allow me to work with his crew. I explained to him that this
would be the greatest favor he could do for me, who found himself
marooned many hundreds of miles from a city, without a job and
penniless, in the midst of a bleak, snow-buried prairie. I also argued
with him that to give me employment would be the easiest means for me to
discharge my debt to him, which, although he absolutely refused to
listen to any talk of indebtedness on my part, amounted to a tidy sum.
He finally consented, and I commenced my task, fully equipped with warm
clothes that were generously donated to me by my fellow laborers. The
first time the pay-car stopped and the paymaster handed me my envelope I
repaid Foreman McDonald every cent I owed him, and although this settled
my financial indebtedness to him, the debt I owe him to this day for his
timely help can never be repaid with mere coin.

One other time the pay-car stopped, and then the glad holidays of
Christmas approached, and when the happy Yule-tide was just a week away,
Foreman McDonald procured for each laborer a return pass to St. Paul. We
went and made our Christmas purchases and returned after an absence of
three days, each of us staggering under the weight of a heavily-laden
sack which we carried slung over our backs, from the train into the bunk
house.

Every spare minute until Christmas Eve there was a mysterious activity
within the crowded space of the small bunk house. We were not only busy
sorting over the purchases we had made in the big cities, which included
a suitable present for each one of our foreman's family down to baby
Helen, and one for each of the laborers, but we were kept busy keeping
the youngsters from prying into the secrets which we did not wish to be
revealed to them until Christmas Eve.

One of us had smuggled in a small Christmas tree, while another one had
purchased the long whiskers that always go with a genuine "Santa Claus",
so dear to the hearts of the children.

At last the natal feast of the Savior arrived, and to the complete
surprise and delight of the McDonald family, w