I'd wipe my boots on you!"--this selfsame janitor, standing by the
furnace, turned slowly around, showed his pale and hollow-eyed face,
and smiled a withering and commiserating smile. "Ye won't go north this
week," he remarked--not without sympathy, for somehow he had taken
a liking to me, which even prompted him off and on to favor me with
caustic expressions of what he thought of the school board and the
leading citizens of the town. I, of course, never encouraged him in his
communicativeness which seemed to be just what he would expect, and no
rebuff ever goaded him into the slightest show of resentment. "We'll
see," I said briefly "Well, Sir," he repeated apodeictically, "ye
won't." I smiled and went out.

But in my classroom I looked from the window across the street. Not even
in broad daylight could you see the opposite houses or trees. And I knew
that, once a storm like that sets in, it is apt to continue for days at
a stretch. It was one of those orgies in which Titan Wind indulges
ever so often on our western prairies. I certainly needed something to
encourage me, and so, before leaving the building, I went upstairs to
the third story and looked through a window which faced north. But,
though I was now above the drifting layer, I could not see very far
here either; the snowflakes were small and like little round granules,
hitting the panes of the windows with little sounds of "ping-ping";
and they came, driven by a relentless gale, in such numbers that they
blotted out whatever was more than two or three hundred yards away.

The inhabitant of the middle latitudes of this continent has no data to
picture to himself what a snowstorm in the north may be. To him snow is
something benign that comes soft-footedly over night, and on the most
silent wings like an owl, something that suggests the sleep of Nature
rather than its battles. The further south you go, the more, of course,
snow loses of its aggressive character.

At the dinner table in the hotel I heard a few more disheartening words.
But after four I defiantly got my tarpaulin out and carried it to the
stable. If I had to run the risk of getting lost, at least I was going
to prepare for it. I had once stayed out, snow-bound, for a day and a
half, nearly without food and altogether without shelter; and I was not
going to get thus caught again. I also carefully overhauled my cutter.
Not a bolt but I tested it with a wrench; and before the stores were
closed