she was, she noticed a peculiar oppression in the air,
which intensified as the day went on. The sky seemed to hang but a
little way above the rolling stretch of frost-bitten grass. But Kitty
laughing over her new doll, Roderick startling the sullen silence
with his drum, the smell of the chicken, slaughtered to make a prairie
holiday, browning in the oven, drove all apprehensions from Catherine's
mind. She was a common creature. Such very little things could make her
happy. She sang as she worked; and what with the drumming of her boy,
and the little exulting shrieks of her baby, the shack was filled with a
deafening and exhilarating din.

It was a little past noon, when she became conscious that there was
sweeping down on her a gray sheet of snow and ice, and not till then did
she realize what those lowering clouds had signified. For one moment she
stood half paralyzed. She thought of everything,--of the cattle, of the
chance for being buried in this drift, of the stock of provisions, of
the power of endurance of the children. While she was still thinking,
the first ice-needles of the blizzard came peppering the windows. The
cattle ran bellowing to the lee side of the house and crouched there,
and the chickens scurried for the coop. Catherine seized such blankets
and bits of carpet as she could find, and crammed them at windows and
doors. Then she piled coal on the fire, and clothed the children in all
they had that was warmest, their out-door garments included; and with
them close about her, she sat and waited. The wind seemed to push
steadily at the walls of the house. The howling became horrible. She
could see that the children were crying with fright, but she could
not hear them. The air was dusky; the cold, in spite of the fire,
intolerable. In every crevice of the wretched structure the ice and snow
made their way. It came through the roof, and began piling up in little
pointed strips under the crevices. Catherine put the children all
together in one bunk, covered them with all the bedclothes she had, and
then stood before them defiantly, facing the west, from whence the
wind was driving. Not suddenly, but by steady pressure, at length the
window-sash yielded, and the next moment that whirlwind was in the
house,--a maddening tumult of ice and wind, leaving no room for
resistance; a killing cold, against which it was futile to fight.
Catherine threw the bedclothes over the heads of the children, and then
threw h