ay when she had stood
looking down upon Prouty and vowed to succeed she had fought and
struggled and struck back, instead of meekly acknowledging herself
crushed and beaten? Had she shaken her fist at the Almighty in so doing,
when she should have bowed her head and folded her hands in resignation?
She did not know; in her despair and bewilderment she lost all logic,
all perspective; she knew only that in spite of the exhaustion of her
body her spirit was still defiant and protesting.

She spread out her hands in supplication, raising her face to the
pitiless sky while needlelike particles stung her eyeballs, and she
cried despairingly:

"Oh, Uncle Joe, where are you? Is this the end of me--Katie Prentice? Is
this all I was born for--just to live through heartaches and hardships,
and then to drop down and die like an animal without knowing happiness
or success or anything I've worked and longed and prayed for? Oh, Uncle
Joe, where are you?"

The wail that the wind carried over the desert was plaintive, minor,
like the cry that had reached him when she sought him in the darkness in
that other crisis. She herself thought of it, but then he had responded
promptly, and with the sound of his voice there had come a sense of
safety and security.

She stood motionless thinking of it, the snow beating into her upturned
face, the wind whipping her skirts about her. Then a feeling of
exultation came to her--an exultation that was of the mind and spirit,
so tangible that it sent over her a glow that was physical, creeping
like a slow warm tide from her toes to the tips of her numb fingers.
Even as she marveled it vanished--a curious trick of the imagination she
regarded it--but it left her with a feeling of courage; inexplicably it
had roused her will to a determination to fight for her life with the
last ounce of her strength, and so long as there was a heart beat in her
body.

The time came, however, when this moment of transport and resolution
seemed so long ago that it was like some misty incident of her
childhood. Her body, as when a jaded horse lashed to a gallop reaches a
stage where it drops to a walk from which no amount of punishment can
rouse it, was refusing to respond to the spur of her will. It became an
effort to walk, to swing her arms and stamp her feet, to make any brisk
movement that kept the circulation going. She knew what it portended,
yet was unable to make greater resistance against the lethargy of col