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Without reaching a conclusion, he put the question from him and willed himself to sleep.

When he awoke it was morning, but there was no change in the wind, except in an increase of its ferocity. The roar was still steady, high-keyed, relentless. A myriad new voices seemed to have joined the screaming tumult. The cold was still intense.

He looked at his watch and found it marking the hour of sunrise, but there was no light. The world was only a gray waste. He renewed the fire, and began preparations for breakfast, his sturdy heart undismayed by the demons without. Rivers, awakened by the clatter of dishes, rose and scraped a peep-hole in a window-pane. Nothing could be seen but a chaos of snow.

“No moving out of here to-day,” he muttered, with a sullen curse.

Bailey assumed a cheerful tone.

“No; we’re in for another day of it.”

Inwardly he was appalled at the thought of what the long hours might bring to him. To spend twenty-four hours more in this terrible constraint would be ghastly. He set about the attempt to break it up. He whistled and sang at his work, calling out to his partner as if there were no evil passions between them.

“This is the fourth blizzard this month. Good thing they didn’t come last winter. This land wouldn’t have been settled at all. What do you suppose these poor squatters will do?”

Rivers did not respond.

Blanche tried to rise, but turned white and dizzy, and fell back upon the bed, seized with a sudden weakness. Rivers brought her some tea and sat by her side, while Bailey again toasted some bread for her. She looked very weak and ill.

Bailey went out to feed the horses, glad of the chance to escape his problem for a moment. Finding Rivers still sullen upon his return, he got out some old magazines and read them aloud. Rivers swore under his breath, but Blanche listened to the reading with relief. The stories dealt mostly with young people who wished to marry, but were prevented by somebody who wished them to “wed according to their station.” They were innocent creatures who had not known any other attachment, and their bliss was always complete and unalloyed at the end.

Bailey read the tender passages in the same prosaic tone with which he described the shipwreck, and his elocution would have been funny to any other group of persons; as it was, neither of his hearers smiled.

Blanche’s heart was filled with rebellion. Why could she not have known Jim in the days when she, too, was young and innocent like the heroines of these stories?

At noon, when Rivers went out to feed the team, Bailey went over toward the wretched woman. His face was kind but firm:

“Mrs. Burke, I hope you’ve decided not to do this thing.”

She looked at him with shrinking eyes.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean you can’t afford to go away with Jim this way.”

“What else can I do? I can’t live without him, and I can’t go back.”

“Well, then, go away alone. Go back to your folks.”

“Oh, I can’t do that! Can’t you see,” she said, finding words with effort–“can’t you see, I must go? Jim is my real husband. I must be true to him now. My folks can’t help me–nobody can help me but Jim–If he stands by me, I can live.” She stopped, feeling sure she had explained nothing. It was so hard to find words.

“There must be some way out of it,” he replied, and his hesitation helped her. She saw that he was thinking upon the problem, and found it not at all a clear case against her.

After Rivers came back they resumed their seats about the fire, talking about the storm–at least, Bailey talked, and Rivers had the grace to listen. He really seemed less sullen and more thoughtful.

Outside the warring winds howled on. The eye could not penetrate the veils of snow which streamed through the air on level lines. The powdered ice rose from the ground in waves which buffeted one another and fell in spray, only to rise again in ceaseless, tumultuous action. There was no sky and no earth. Everything slid, sifted, drifted, or madly swirled.