of his wisdom.

Judge Menefee, to whom men granted leadership and the initiatory as
upon a silver salver, sprang from the coach at once. Four of his
fellow-passengers followed, inspired by his example, ready to explore,
to objurgate, to resist, to submit, to proceed, according as their
prime factor might be inclined to sway them. The fifth passenger, a
young woman, remained in the coach.

Bildad had halted upon the shoulder of the first mountain spur. Two
rail-fences, ragged-black, hemmed the road. Fifty yards above the
upper fence, showing a dark blot in the white drifts, stood a small
house. Upon this house descended--or rather ascended--Judge Menefee
and his cohorts with boyish whoops born of the snow and stress. They
called; they pounded at window and door. At the inhospitable silence
they waxed restive; they assaulted and forced the pregnable barriers,
and invaded the premises.

The watchers from the coach heard stumblings and shoutings from the
interior of the ravaged house. Before long a light within flickered,
glowed, flamed high and bright and cheerful. Then came running back
through the driving flakes the exuberant explorers. More deeply
pitched than the clarion--even orchestral in volume--the voice of
Judge Menefee proclaimed the succour that lay in apposition with their
state of travail. The one room of the house was uninhabited, he said,
and bare of furniture; but it contained a great fireplace, and they
had discovered an ample store of chopped wood in a lean-to at the
rear. Housing and warmth against the shivering night were thus
assured. For the placation of Bildad Rose there was news of a stable,
not ruined beyond service, with hay in a loft, near the house.

"Gentlemen," cried Bildad Rose from his seat, swathed in coats and
robes, "tear me down two panels of that fence, so I can drive in. That
is old man Redruth's shanty. I thought we must be nigh it. They took
him to the foolish house in August."

Cheerfully the four passengers sprang at the snow-capped rails. The
exhorted team tugged the coach up the slant to the door of the edifice
from which a mid-summer madness had ravished its proprietor. The
driver and two of the passengers began to unhitch. Judge Menefee
opened the door of the coach, and removed his hat.

"I have to announce, Miss Garland," said he, "the enforced suspension
of our journey. The driver asserts that the risk in travelling the
mountain road by night is too great even to consi