en swept away at once--even the chaff that fell down our
necks only gave us cause for laughter.

"Your coat is all wet!" she exclaimed.

"It was the snow, shoveling the way in," I said. "It's nothing."

But she began right there to take care of me. She made me take off the
overcoat, and wrap myself in the blanket. The dampness went out into the
dry straw; but when drowsiness came upon us, she would not let me take
the chance of getting chilled, but made me wrap myself in the robes with
her; and we lay there talking until finally, tired by my labors, I went
to sleep with her arms about me, and her lips close to mine; and when I
awoke, she was asleep, and I lay there listening to her soft breathing
for hours.

We were both hungry when she awoke, and in the total darkness we felt
about for the dinner-basket, in which were the dinners of the children
of the McConkey family with whom she had boarded, and who had gone home
at noon, because the fuel was gone. We ate frozen pie, and frozen boiled
eggs, and frozen bread and butter; and then lay talking and caressing
each other for hours. We talked about the poor horses, for which
Virginia felt a deep pity, out there in the fierce storm and the awful
cold. We talked of the beautiful cutter; and finally, I explained the
way in which I had robbed Gowdy of horses and robes and sleigh, and dog.

"He can never have the dog back," said she. "And to think that I am
hiding out in a strawstack with a robber and a horse-thief!"

Then she said she reckoned we'd have to join the Bunker gang, if we
could find any of it to join. Certainly we should be fugitives from
justice when the storm was over; but she for herself would rather be a
fugitive always with me than to be rescued by "that man"--and it was
lucky for him, too, she said, that I had licked him and shut him up in a
house where he would be warm and fed; because he never would have been
able to save himself in this awful storm as I had done. Nobody could
have done so well as I had done. I had snatched her from the very
jaws of death.

"Then," said I, "you're mine."

"Of course I am," said she. "I've been yours ever since we lived
together so beautifully on the road, and in our Grove of Destiny. Of
course I'm yours--and you are mine, Teunis--ain't you?"

"Then," said I, "just as soon as we get out of here, we'll be married."

It took argument to establish this point, but the jury was with me from
the start; and finally nothin