thought his eye seemed
unwarrantably superior to the elements and to the man, but quickly
attributed that to the characteristic self-importance of a petty chef.
"Camp cook" was the niche that I gave him in the Hall of Types; and he
fitted it as an apple fits a dumpling.

Cold it was in spite of the glowing stove; and Ross and I sat and
talked, shuddering frequently, half from nerves and half from the
freezing draughts. So he brought the bottle and the cook brought
boiling water, and we made prodigious hot toddies against the attacks
of Boreas. We clinked glasses often. They sounded like icicles
dropping from the eaves, or like the tinkle of a thousand prisms on a
Louis XIV chandelier that I once heard at a boarder's dance in the
parlor of a ten-a-week boarding-house in Gramercy Square. _Sic
transit_.

Silence in the terrible beauty of the snow and of the Sphinx and of the
stars; but they who believe that all things, from a without-wine table
d'hote to the crucifixion, may be interpreted through music, might have
found a nocturne or a symphony to express the isolation of that
blotted-out world. The clink of glass and bottle, the aeolian chorus
of the wind in the house crannies, its deeper trombone through the
canyon below, and the Wagnerian crash of the cook's pots and pans,
united in a fit, discordant melody, I thought. No less welcome an
accompaniment was the sizzling of broiling ham and venison cutlet
indorsed by the solvent fumes of true Java, bringing rich promises of
comfort to our yearning souls.

The cook brought the smoking supper to the table. He nodded to me
democratically as he cast the heavy plates around as though he were
pitching quoits or hurling the discus. I looked at him with some
appraisement and curiosity and much conciliation. There was no prophet
to tell us when that drifting evil outside might cease to fall; and it
is well, when snow-bound, to stand somewhere within the radius of the
cook's favorable consideration. But I could read neither favor nor
disapproval in the face and manner of our pot-wrestler.

He was about five feet nine inches, and two hundred pounds of
commonplace, bull-necked, pink-faced, callous calm. He wore brown duck
trousers too tight and too short, and a blue flannel shirt with sleeves
rolled above his elbows. There was a sort of grim, steady scowl on his
features that looked to me as though he had fixed it there purposely as
a protection against the weakness