en he awoke it was morning, but there was no change in the wind,
except in an increase of its ferocity. The roar was still steady,
high-keyed, relentless. A myriad new voices seemed to have joined the
screaming tumult. The cold was still intense.

He looked at his watch and found it marking the hour of sunrise, but
there was no light. The world was only a gray waste. He renewed the
fire, and began preparations for breakfast, his sturdy heart undismayed
by the demons without. Rivers, awakened by the clatter of dishes, rose
and scraped a peep-hole in a window-pane. Nothing could be seen but a
chaos of snow.

"No moving out of here to-day," he muttered, with a sullen curse.

Bailey assumed a cheerful tone.

"No; we're in for another day of it."

Inwardly he was appalled at the thought of what the long hours might
bring to him. To spend twenty-four hours more in this terrible
constraint would be ghastly. He set about the attempt to break it up.
He whistled and sang at his work, calling out to his partner as if there
were no evil passions between them.

"This is the fourth blizzard this month. Good thing they didn't come
last winter. This land wouldn't have been settled at all. What do you
suppose these poor squatters will do?"

Rivers did not respond.

Blanche tried to rise, but turned white and dizzy, and fell back upon
the bed, seized with a sudden weakness. Rivers brought her some tea and
sat by her side, while Bailey again toasted some bread for her. She
looked very weak and ill.

Bailey went out to feed the horses, glad of the chance to escape his
problem for a moment. Finding Rivers still sullen upon his return, he
got out some old magazines and read them aloud. Rivers swore under his
breath, but Blanche listened to the reading with relief. The stories
dealt mostly with young people who wished to marry, but were prevented
by somebody who wished them to "wed according to their station." They
were innocent creatures who had not known any other attachment, and
their bliss was always complete and unalloyed at the end.

Bailey read the tender passages in the same prosaic tone with which he
described the shipwreck, and his elocution would have been funny to any
other group of persons; as it was, neither of his hearers smiled.

Blanche's heart was filled with rebellion. Why could she not have known
Jim in the days when she, too, was young and innocent like the heroines
of these stories?

At noon, when Rivers w