ague
that neither of them could name it.

But slowly the sound grew. The tree tops, silent before with snow, gave
utterance; the thickets cracked, stirred, and moved as if some dread
spirit were coming to life within them. The candle flickered. A low
moan reached them from the chimney. Bill strode to the door and threw
it wide.

He did not have to peer out into that unfathomable darkness to know the
enemy that was at his gates. It spoke in a sudden fury, and the snow
flurries swept past, like strange and wandering spirits, in the dim
candle light. No longer the flakes drifted easily and silently down.
They seemed to be coming from all directions, whirling, eddying, borne
swiftly through the night and hurled into drifts. And a dread voice
spoke across the snow.

"The north wind," Bill said simply.

Virginia's eyes grew wide. She sensed the awe and the dread in his
tones; even she, fresh from cities, knew that this foe was not to be
despised. She felt the sharp pinch of the cold as the heat escaped
through the open door. The temperature was falling steadily; already it
was far below freezing. Bill shut the door and walked back to her.

"What does it mean?" she asked breathlessly.

"Winter. The northern winter. I've seen it break too many times.
Perhaps we can drown out the sound of it--with music."

He walked toward the battered instrument. Her heart was cold within
her, and she nodded eagerly. "Yes--a little ragtime. It will be
frightfully loud in the cabin, but it's better than the sound of the
storm."

She didn't dream that this wilderness man would choose any other kind of
music than ragtime. She was but new to the North, otherwise she would
have made no such mistake. Superficiality was no part of these northern
men. They knew life in the raw, the travail of existence, the pinch of
cold and the fury of the storm; and the music that they felt in their
hearts was never the light-hearted dance music of the South. Music is
the articulation of the soul, and the souls of these men were darkened
and sad. It could not be otherwise, sons of the wilderness as they
were.

The pack song, on the hilltop in the winter moon, was never a melody of
laughter. Rather it was the song of life itself, life in the raw, and
the sadness and pain and the hopeless war of existence find their echo
in the wailing notes. None of the wilderness voices were joyous. When
Bill had chosen his records he took those th