ifted over a post or a
bush.

At the kitchen stairs Mahailey met him in gleeful excitement.
"Lord 'a' mercy, Mr. Claude, I can't git the storm door open.
We're snowed in fas'." She looked like a tramp woman, in a jacket
patched with many colours, her head tied up in an old black
"fascinator," with ravelled yarn hanging down over her face like
wild locks of hair. She kept this costume for calamitous
occasions; appeared in it when the water-pipes were frozen and
burst, or when spring storms flooded the coops and drowned her
young chickens.

The storm door opened outward. Claude put his shoulder to it and
pushed it a little way. Then, with Mahailey's fireshovel he
dislodged enough snow to enable him to force back the door. Dan
came tramping in his stocking-feet across the kitchen to his
boots, which were still drying behind the stove. "She's sure a
bad one, Claude," he remarked, blinking.

"Yes. I guess we won't try to go out till after breakfast. We'll
have to dig our way to the barn, and I never thought to bring the
shovels up last night."

"Th' ole snow shovels is in the cellar. I'll git 'em."

"Not now, Mahailey. Give us our breakfast before you do anything
else."

Mrs. Wheeler came down, pinning on her little shawl, her
shoulders more bent than usual. "Claude," she said fearfully,
"the cedars in the front yard are all but covered. Do you suppose
our cattle could be buried?"

He laughed. "No, Mother. The cattle have been moving around all
night, I expect."

When the two men started out with the wooden snow shovels, Mrs.
Wheeler and Mahailey stood in the doorway, watching them. For a
short distance from the house the path they dug was like a
tunnel, and the white walls on either side were higher than their
heads. On the breast of the hill the snow was not so deep, and
they made better headway. They had to fight through a second
heavy drift before they reached the barn, where they went in and
warmed themselves among the horses and cows. Dan was for getting
next a warm cow and beginning to milk.

"Not yet," said Claude. "I want to have a look at the hogs before
we do anything here."

The hog-house was built down in a draw behind the barn. When
Claude reached the edge of the gully, blown almost bare, he could
look about him. The draw was full of snow, smooth... except in
the middle, where there was a rumpled depression, resembling a
great heap of tumbled bed-linen.

Dan gasped. "God a' mighty, Claude, th