ittle window facing the east and looked
out, each time thawing a hole in the frost on the window-panes.

The wind was rising again, and the night promised to be wild, as the
two preceding nights had been. As he moved back and forth setting out
their scanty meal, he was thinking of the old life back in Wisconsin in
the deeps of the little _coulee_; of the sleigh-rides with the boys and
girls; of the Christmas doings; of the damp, thick-falling snow among
the pines, where the wind had no terrors; of musical bells on swift
horses in the fragrant deeps, where the snowflakes fell like caresses
through the tossing branches of the trees.

By the side of such a life the plain, with its sliding snow and
ferocious wind, was appalling--a treeless expanse and a racing-ground
for snow and wind. The man's mood grew darker while he mused. He served
the meal on the rude box which took the place of table, and still his
companion did not come. Ho looked at his watch. It was nearly one
o'clock, and yet there was no sign of the sturdy figure of Anson.

The house of the poor Norwegian was about two miles away, and out of
sight, being built in a gully; but now the eye could distinguish a
house only when less than a mile away. A man could not at times be seen
at a distance of ten rods, though occasional lulls in the wind
permitted Bert to see nearly to the "First Moccasin."

"He may be in the swale," muttered the watcher as he stood with his eye
to the loop-hole. But the next time he looked the plain was as wild and
lone as before, save under the rising blast the snow was beginning to
ramp and race across the level sod till it looked at times like a sea
running white with foam and misty with spray.

At two o'clock he said: "Well, I s'pose Ans has concluded to stay over
there to dinner, though what the Norsk can offer as inducement I swear
I don't know. I'll eat, anyhow; he can have what's left."

He sat down to his lonely meal, and ate slowly, getting up two or three
times from his candle-box in a growing anxiety for Ans, using the
heated poker now to clear a spot on the pane. He expressed his growing
apprehension, manlike, by getting angry.

"I don't see what the darn fool means by stayin' so late. It'll be dark
by four o'clock, er jest as soon as that cloud over there strikes us.
You couldn't beat sense into some men's heads with a club."

He had eaten his dinner now, and had taken to pacing up and down the
little room, which was ex