occasins, with gum boots over them.
Muffled in her furs, she opened the door again. When she had contrived
to close it, the cold struck through her to the bone as she floundered
towards the team. There was nobody to whom she could look for
assistance, but that could not be helped. It was evident that some
misfortune had befallen Hastings and that she must act wisely and
quickly.

The first thing necessary was to unload the sled, and, though the
birches seldom grow to any size in a prairie bluff, some of the logs
were heavy. She was gasping with the effort when she had flung a few of
them down, after which she discovered that the rest were held up by one
or two stout poles let into sockets. Try as she would, she could not get
them out, and then she remembered that Hastings kept a whipsaw in a shed
close by. She contrived to find it, and attacked the poles in breathless
haste, working clumsily with mittened hands, until there was a crash and
rattle as she sprang clear. Then she started the team, and the rest of
the logs rolled off into the snow.

That was one difficulty overcome, but the next appeared more serious.
She must find the bluff as soon as possible, and in the snow-filled
darkness she could not tell where it lay. Even if she could have seen
anything of the kind, there was no landmark on the desolate level waste
between it and the homestead. She, however, remembered that she had one
guide.

Hastings and his hired man had recently hauled in a great many loads of
birch logs, and as they had made a well-worn trail it seemed to her just
possible that she might trace it back to the bluff. No great weight of
snow had fallen yet.

Before Agatha set out she had a struggle with the team, for the horses
evidently had no intention of making another journey if they could help
it, but at last she swung them into the narrow riband of trail, and
plodded away into the darkness at their heads. It was then that she
first clearly realized what she had undertaken. Very little of her face
was left bare between her fur cap and collar, but every inch of
uncovered skin tingled as if it had been lashed with thorns or stabbed
with innumerable needles. The air was thick with a fine powder that
filled her eyes and nostrils, the wind buffeted her, and there was an
awful cold--the cold that taxes the utmost strength of mind and body of
those who are forced to face it on the shelterless prairie.

Still the girl struggled on, feeling with