like prisoners--jailed innocently. He hovered about the
stove, feeding it twisted bundles of hay till he grew yellow with the
tanning effect of the smoke, while Blanche cowered in her chair,
petulant and ungenerous.

The winter deepened. There were many days when the sun shone, but the
snow slid across the plain with a menacing, hissing sound, and the sky
was milky with flying frost, and the horizon looked cold and wild; but
these were merely the pauses between storms. The utter dryness of the
flakes and the never-resting progress of the winds kept the drifts
shifting, shifting.

"This is what you've dragged me into!" Blanche burst out, one desolate
day after a week's confinement to the house. "This is your fine
home--this dug-out! This is the climate you bragged about. I can't stay
here any longer. Oh, my God, if I was only back home again!" She rose,
and walked back and forth, her shawl trailing after her. "If I'd had any
word to say about it, we never'd 'a' been out in this God-forsaken
country."

He bowed his head to her passion and sat in silence, while she raged on.

"Do you know we haven't got ten pounds of flour in the house? And
another blizzard likely? And no butter, either? What y' goin' to do? Let
me starve?"

"I _did_ intend to go over to Bussy's and get back the flour they
borrowed of us, but I'm a little afraid to go out to-day; it looks like
another norther. The wind's rising, and old Tom--"

"But that's just the reason why you've got to go. We can't run such
risks. We've got to eat or die--you ought to know that."

Burke rose, and began putting on his wraps. "I'll go over and see what I
can squeeze out of old lady Bussy."

"Oh, this wind will drive me crazy!" she cried out. "Oh, I wish somebody
would come!" She dropped upon the bed, sobbing with a hysterical
catching of the breath. The wind was piping a high-keyed, mourning note
on the chimney-top, a sound that rang echoing down through every hidden
recess of her brain, shaking her, weakening her, till at last she turned
upon her husband with wild eyes.

"Take me with you! I can't stay here any longer--I shall go crazy!" She
turned her head to listen. "Isn't some one coming? Look out and see! I
hear bells!"

Burke tried to soothe her in his timid, clumsy fashion.

"There, there, now--sit down. You ain't well, Blanche. I'll ask Mrs.
Bussy to come--"

She suddenly seemed to remember something. "Don't talk to her. Go to
Craig's. Don't go to