as equal to this; there was a quality in the pressure
of this cold that was deadly. The wind pierced in spite of every kind of
covering. Real fear began to lay hold upon him. He stumbled easily; the
action of his limbs began to give him alarm. The package of spareribs fell
from under his arm, and he stooped to pick it up. As he bent over the wind
caught him like a tumble-weed and threw him in a shivering heap on the
ground. He had worn no mittens in the morning, and his hands stung as if
tortured by the lashes of many whips. To ease their hurt he remained
huddled together with his back to the wind while he breathed on his
freezing fingers, but remembered that that was the surest way to add to
the nip of the cold in a blast which condensed the breath from his mouth
into icicles before it had time to get away from his moustache. Staggering
to his feet, he stumbled on toward the Hunter house, trying as hard as his
fast benumbing senses would permit to bear toward the wind and the
cornfield at the right. He had not picked up the package--had forgotten it
in fact--and now he tried to beat his freezing hands across his shoulders
as he ran. The bitter wind could not be endured, and he crossed his hands,
thrusting them into his sleeves, hoping to warm them somehow on his
wrists; but with eyes uncovered he could not gauge his steps, and stumbled
and fell. Unable to get his hands out of his sleeves in time to protect
himself, he tripped forward awkwardly and scratched his face on the cut
stubs of the meadow-grass. Evidently he had not reached the road as yet.
He knew the road so well that he could have kept it with a bandage over
his eyes but for the wind which thrust him uncertainly from his course. It
was that which was defeating him. Try as he would, he could not keep his
attention fixed upon the necessity of staying near that cornfield.
Determined to find it before he proceeded farther toward the west, he
faced the wind squarely, and, bracing his body firmly, hurried as fast as
he could toward the stalkfield.

After a time he seemed to wake up; he was not facing the wind, and he was
aching miserably. Luther Hansen knew what that meant: he was freezing.
Already the lethargy of sleep weighted each dragging foot. He thought of
the nest an old sow had been building in the pen next to the one where the
killing had been done that day. With the instincts of her kind, the
mother-pig had prepared for the storm by making a bed where it w