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Day after day the thermometer fell so far below zero that no living thing moved on the wide, white waste. The snows seemed never at rest. One storm followed another, till the drifting, icy sands were worn as fine as flour. The house was like a cave. Its windows, thick with frost, let in only a pallid light at midday. There was little for Blanche to do, and there was nothing for her to say to Willard, who came and went aimlessly between the barn and house. His poor old team could no longer face the cold wind without danger of freezing, and so he walked to the store for the mail and the groceries. They lived on boiled potatoes and bacon, suffering like prisoners–jailed innocently. He hovered about the stove, feeding it twisted bundles of hay till he grew yellow with the tanning effect of the smoke, while Blanche cowered in her chair, petulant and ungenerous.

The winter deepened. There were many days when the sun shone, but the snow slid across the plain with a menacing, hissing sound, and the sky was milky with flying frost, and the horizon looked cold and wild; but these were merely the pauses between storms. The utter dryness of the flakes and the never-resting progress of the winds kept the drifts shifting, shifting.

“This is what you’ve dragged me into!” Blanche burst out, one desolate day after a week’s confinement to the house. “This is your fine home–this dug-out! This is the climate you bragged about. I can’t stay here any longer. Oh, my God, if I was only back home again!” She rose, and walked back and forth, her shawl trailing after her. “If I’d had any word to say about it, we never’d ‘a’ been out in this God-forsaken country.”

He bowed his head to her passion and sat in silence, while she raged on.

“Do you know we haven’t got ten pounds of flour in the house? And another blizzard likely? And no butter, either? What y’ goin’ to do? Let me starve?”

“I did intend to go over to Bussy’s and get back the flour they borrowed of us, but I’m a little afraid to go out to-day; it looks like another norther. The wind’s rising, and old Tom–“

“But that’s just the reason why you’ve got to go. We can’t run such risks. We’ve got to eat or die–you ought to know that.”

Burke rose, and began putting on his wraps. “I’ll go over and see what I can squeeze out of old lady Bussy.”

“Oh, this wind will drive me crazy!” she cried out. “Oh, I wish somebody would come!” She dropped upon the bed, sobbing with a hysterical catching of the breath. The wind was piping a high-keyed, mourning note on the chimney-top, a sound that rang echoing down through every hidden recess of her brain, shaking her, weakening her, till at last she turned upon her husband with wild eyes.

“Take me with you! I can’t stay here any longer–I shall go crazy!” She turned her head to listen. “Isn’t some one coming? Look out and see! I hear bells!”

Burke tried to soothe her in his timid, clumsy fashion.

“There, there, now–sit down. You ain’t well, Blanche. I’ll ask Mrs. Bussy to come–“

She suddenly seemed to remember something. “Don’t talk to her. Go to Craig’s. Don’t go to Bussy’s–please don’t! I hate her. I won’t be in her debt.”

This pleading tone puzzled him, but he promised; and, hitching up his thin, old horses, drove around to the door of the shanty. Blanche came out, dressed to go with him, but when she felt the edge of the wind she shrank. Her lips turned blue and she cowered back against the side of the cabin, holding her shawl like a shield before her bosom. “I can’t do it! It’s too cold! I’d freeze to death. You’ll have to go alone.”

Burke was relieved. “Yes, you’d better stay,” he said, and drove off.