uch.

It was a little more cheerful as the days began to get longer as
February went on, and in the latter part of the month I thought the
weather seemed to grow slightly better on the whole. For three days
after the big blizzard the thermometer had stood from forty to
forty-five below zero each morning, and it did not get up much higher
at any time during the day. On the last two days of February it thawed
a little in the afternoon, and on March 2d the snow was soft enough so
I could make snowballs to throw at Kaiser; but it soon turned cold
again.

There were northern lights many nights, flaming all over the heavens,
like long swords, and on the night of February 15th there were some
more prodigious than I would believe were possible had I not seen them
with these eyes. They hung, wavering and trembling, over the whole
northern sky almost to the zenith, like the lower edges of vast,
mighty curtains, swaying and moving, now here, now there, and with all
colors, yellow, violet, scarlet, blood red, as if the whole heavens
were going to burn up, the thing being so marvelous that had I not
seen lesser displays before I should have thought the world were at an
end, no less, and have died, I do believe, of terror. As it was I
stood in the snow by the barn gazing till my feet were like blocks of
ice and I knew not if I were in Track's End or in the moon. Kaiser at
first barked at the sight, then growled, then whined, and next ran
yelping away to the shed, where I found him crept beneath a bench.
Never in my life before nor since have I seen anything to equal the
heavens that night. Early on the morning of February 24th I saw a
beautiful mirage. I could see plainly, high in the air, the timber
and bluffs along the Missouri, and the Chain-of-Lakes and coteaux. It
lasted for a full half-hour.

[Illustration: THE INDIAN GETTING MY RIFLE IN THE STRONGHOLD]

It happened on the night of March 14th that I took it into my head to
sleep another night in the stronghold with Kaiser, and so brought
about one more startling thing. It seemed that I must always be doing
something instead of staying content with things as they were. It had
been thawing a little for several days and I was beginning to wonder
if I could not hope for such weather that the train might get through
before long and release me from the awful place; though I knew the
snow was packed in the cuts all along the line to the east like ice,
and that it would take a gre