n than the wilderness it seemed with the muffling drifts
heavy on the roofs, blocking the dark open doors of the tenantless
dwellings, lying in fluffy masses on the boughs of the trees that had
once made the desert spaces so pleasantly umbrageous in those sweet
summers so long ago. The great circular council-house, shaped like a
dome, was whitely aglimmer against the gray twilight and the wintry
background of the woods and mountains,--only the vaguest suggestions of
heights seen through the ceaseless whirl of the crystalline flakes. No
wolf now, although remembering the casual glimpse he had had he was
prepared with rifle and pistol, and held his knife in his hand; no bear;
no sign of living creature until, as he skirted the jagged bluff of the
river where he fancied the horse might have lost his footing, he heard a
sudden whinny of welcome, the sound keen and eerie and intrusive in the
strange breathless solemnity of the silent place.

Gazing cautiously over the verge of the precipice, he saw the animal
despite the gathering shadows. The horse was quite safe, having
doubtless slipped down in the soft densities of a great drift dislodged
from the crevice by his own weight. His pack was still on his back, now
piled twice as high with snow. He lifted his arched neck as he sprang
about with undiminished activity, vainly seeking to ascend the almost
sheer precipice.

Daylight, however, was essential for his rescue. The effort now on these
icy steeps might cost either man or beast a broken limb, if no more.
With an instinct of self-protection the animal had chosen the lee of a
great buttress of the cliff, and could stand there safely all night
though the temperature should fall still lower. The young pack-man
called out a word or two of encouragement, listening fearfully as the
sound struck back in the silence from the icy bank of the river, the
craggy hillsides, and the resonant walls of the deserted houses in the
old "waste town." Himself suddenly stricken to silence, he realized as
he turned that the night had at last closed in. It lay dark and desolate
in the limitless woods, where a vague sense of motion gave token that
the snow was still viewlessly falling in the dense obscurities.

But in the "waste town" itself a pallid visibility lingered in the open
spaces where the trees were few, and gloomily showed the empty cabins,
the deserted council-house, the vacant "beloved square." Somehow, turn
as he would, this dim sc