shall be in a bad way. I can carry twenty-five pounds
without trouble, and will be back in a few hours; then the storm may
rage as hard as it pleases, for all we care."

The preparations were quickly made, and, to shorten my story, I may say
that, after a laborious tramp, I reached the village without mishap,
bought my quarter of a hundred of flour, slung it over my shoulder, and
started on my return.

By this time I had made several disquieting discoveries. The snow was
falling faster than ever, the cold was increasing, a gale was blowing,
and, under the circumstances, of course there was not a glimmer of
light in the sky. My course was directly across the prairie, and in
the event of my tracks being obliterated by the snow--as was almost
certain to be the case--it was almost impossible for me to prevent
myself from going astray.

My hope lay in Jack's promise that he would keep a bright light burning
in the upper story to guide me on my course. On a clear night this
light was visible from the village, but somehow or other I failed to
take into account the state of the weather. The air was full of
eddying flakes, which would render the headlight of a locomotive
invisible a hundred yards distant. Strange that this important fact
never occurred to me until I was fully a fourth of a mile from the
village. Then, after looking in vain for the beacon light, the danger
of my situation struck me, and I halted.

"I am certain to go wrong," I said to myself.

"It is out of my power to follow a direct course without something to
serve as a compass. I will go back to the village and wait till
morning."

Wheeling about in my tracks, I resumed my wearisome tramp through the
heavy snow, and kept it up until I was certain I had travelled fully a
fourth of a mile. Then when I paused a moment and gazed ahead and
around, I was confronted by blank darkness on every hand. What a proof
of a man's tendency to go wrong, that in aiming at a village of fifty
dwellings, and only a fourth of a mile away, I had missed it altogether!

This discovery gave me my first thrill of real alarm. I shouted, but
my voice fell dead in the snowy air. The gale was blowing more
furiously than ever, and the cold was so intense that it penetrated my
thick clothing and caused my teeth to rattle together!

"You can be of no use to me," I exclaimed, flinging away the small bag
of flour. "The village can't be far off, and I will find it."

Dete