is tender care, and in full apprehension of their danger, felt a
growing confidence in the man beside her. She knew that he fully
realized their peril and admired him for his efforts to conceal his
fears from her.

It was growing darker and the horse was moving with feeble steps.
Carson was at the point of giving vent to his fears, when the animal
stopped. He left the sleigh, and upon going to the horse's head, found
they were beside a cabin. His heart gave a great leap of joy and he
called exultantly to Annie.

The cabin was deserted, but, praise Providence, it was shelter. The
door swung open on its hinges. There was a fireplace with some
half-burned logs in a heap of ashes. When Annie was securely inside,
he brought in the robes from the sleigh and next unhitched the horse
and brought the animal inside the cabin. This made Annie's heart leap
with joy; she had not considered how they would protect the horse, and
this humane act on the part of Carson gave her the most implicit
confidence in the man. There is nothing to fear from a man who is so
kind to animals, was her mental comment.

Soon there was a blazing fire on the hearth. Some poles were found by
the door. These Carson dug from the snow and brought inside. He had
no axe with which to cut them, and in the emergency, he laid the ends
together in the fire slantwise from the chimney, and as they burned
away, he shoved the logs forward. The wind screamed in wildest fury,
while the snow drifted in through the rough clapboard roof.

Until now no thought had been given to the lunch which Annie had
prepared for the trip. She brought it out from among the wraps and
when Carson gave the horse a buttered biscuit as his share of the
meal, she watched the act with a thrill of gladness. The blazing logs
gave warmth and light, and the man and woman sat and talked throughout
the long watches of the night, while the snow drifted and the wind
screamed and roared, making the loose clapboards of the roof creak and
groan.

There these two, thrown together by the reckless hand of fate, told
incidents of their lives and won the love and sympathy of each other.
A new song was born in Carson's breast. For a moment he seemed to
remember a former life; somewhere out in the wide, white waste and
hush of infinite space, where they had known each other and now their
souls imprisoned in forms of clay, they had met by chance and renewed
an old affinity.

As she told him the simple stor