drivers off. We went into it twice that way. I
could see it was shoving the tender up in the air every time and told
Doubleday--oh, if you'd been there! The next time we sent the plough
through the first crust and drove a wind-pocket maybe forty or fifty
yards and hit the ice with the seven engines jamming into us. My God!
she doubled up like a jack-knife--Pat, Pat, Pat."

"Can you recollect where Blood was standing when you buckled?"

"In the right gangway." There was a pause. "He must have dropped,"
she heard Glover say.

"Then he'll never drop again, Mr. Glover, for if he slipped off the
ties he'd drop a thousand feet."

"The heaviest snow is right at the top of the hill?"

"Yes, sir."

"If we can cross the hill we can find him anyway."

"Don't try to get across that hill till you put in five hundred
shovellers, Mr. Glover."

"That would take a week. If he's alive we must get him within
twenty-four hours. He may freeze to death to-night."

"Don't try to cross that hill with a plough, Mr. Glover. Mind my
words. It's no use. I've bucked with you many a time--you know that."

"Yes."

"You're going to your death when you try that."

"There's the doctor now, Foley," Glover answered. "Let him look you
over carefully. Come this way."

The voices receded. Listening to the talk, little of which she
understood, a growing fear had come over Gertrude. Her eyes had
pierced the gray light about her, and as she heard Glover walk away she
rose hurriedly and stepped to the doorway to detain him. Glover had
disappeared, but before her, stretched on the couch back of the table,
lay McGraw. She knew him instantly, and so strangely did the gloom
shroud his features that his steady eyes seemed looking straight at
her. She divined that he had been brought back hurt. A chill passed
over her, a horror. She hesitated a moment, and, fascinated, stepped
closer; then she knew she was staring at the dead.

Terror-stricken and with sinking strength she made her way to the hotel
and slipped up to the parlor. Throwing off her wraps she went to the
window; Glover was coming up the street. There was only a moment in
which to collect herself. She hastened to her bedroom, wet her
forehead with cologne, and at her mirror her fingers ran tremblingly
over the coils of her hair. She caught up a fresh handkerchief for her
girdle, looked for an instant appealingly into her own eyes and closed
them to think. Glover