the blue-grass fields of Kentucky saved us
from stalling out in that fearful moving flood of wind and frost and
snow. Two or three times we narrowly escaped being thrown out into it by
the overturn of the sleigh; and then I foresaw a struggle, in which
there would be no hope; for in a storm in which a strong man is
helpless, how could he expect to come out safe with a weak girl on
his hands?

At last, the inevitable happened: the off mare dove into a great drift;
the nigh one pulled on: and they came to a staggering halt, one of them
was kept from falling partly by her own efforts, and partly by the snow
about her legs against which she braced herself. As they stood there,
they turned their heads and looked back as if to say that so far as they
were concerned, the fight was over. They had done all they could.

I sat a moment thinking. I looked about, and saw, between gusts, that we
were almost against a huge straw-pile, where some neighbor had threshed
a setting of wheat. This might mean that we were close to a house, or it
might not. I handed the lines to Virginia under the robes, got out, and
struggled forward to look at my team. Their bloodshot eyes and quivering
flanks told me that they could help us no longer; so I unhitched them,
so as to keep the cutter as a possible shelter, and turned them loose.
They floundered off into the drifts, and left us alone. Cuffed and
mauled by the storm, I made a circuit of the stack, and stumbled over
the tumbling-rod of the threshing-machine, which was still standing
where it had been used. Leaning against the wheel was a shovel, carried
for use in setting the separator. This I took with me, with some notion
of building a snow-house for us; for I somehow felt that if there was
any hope for us, it lay in the shelter of that straw. As I passed the
side of the stack, just where the ground was scraped bare by the wind, I
saw what seemed to be a hole under and into the great loose pile of dry
straw. It looked exactly like one of those burrows which the children
used to make in play in such places.

Virginia was safe for the moment, sitting covered up snugly with her
hands warmed by the little dog; but the cold was beginning to penetrate
the robes. I could leave her for the moment while I investigated the
burrow with the shovel. As I gained a little advantage over the snow
which was drifted in almost as fast as I could shovel it out, my heart
leaped as I found the hole opening out int