it were filled with
invisible particles of ice. The clouds were lowering, and as the
afternoon wore away there sprang up in the west a black band of vapor,
almost like ink.

Alice induced Ruth to pay a visit to the barn, to watch the preparations
for providing for the stock. Even the animals seemed uneasy, as though
they sensed some impending disaster. The horses, always nervous, were
doubly so, and moved restlessly about, with pricked-up ears, and
startled neighs. The cows, too, lowed plaintively.

"Well, we've done all we can," announced Mr. Macksey, as night came on.
"Now all we can do is to wait. There's plenty of fuel in the cellar, and
we'll not freeze, at any rate."

There was a sense of gloom over all, as they sat in the big living room
of Elk Lodge that night, and looked at the blazing logs. Everyone
listened apprehensively, as though to hear the first message of the
impending storm.

The sighing of the wind, if wind it was that made that curious sound,
was more pronounced now, and as the blast came down the chimney it
scattered ashes and embers about, and at times rose to an uncanny wail.

"Oh, but that gives me the shivers!" exclaimed Miss Pennington, tossing
aside the novel in which she had tried to become interested. "This is
positively awful! I wish I were back in New York."

"So do I!" added her chum.

"Oh, but a good snow storm is glorious!" cried Alice. "I am just wild to
see it."

"That's right," exclaimed her father, with a smile. "Take a cheerful
view of it, anyhow."

Some one proposed a guessing game, and with that under way the spirits
of all revived somewhat. Then came another simple game, and the time
passed pleasantly.

Mr. Macksey, coming back from a trip to the side door, startled them all
by announcing:

"She's here!"

"Who?" asked his wife, looking up from her sewing.

"The storm! It's snowing like cotton batting!"

Alice rushed to the window. She shaded her eyes with her hands at the
side of her head and peered out. It seemed as though the lamplights
shone on a solid wall of white, so thickly was the snow falling.

The wind had now risen to a blast of hurricane-like velocity and it
fairly shook Elk Lodge, low and substantial as the house was.

By ones and twos the picture players went to their rooms, and soon
silence and darkness settled down over the Lodge. That is, silence
within the house, but outside there was the riot of the storm.

Two or three times during the