ve John see him when he gets home," Elizabeth answered
indifferently. "My! I wonder when they will be able to get back?" she
added.

"They wasn't through tradin' when this thing come on," Luther replied.
"Anyhow, houses was too thick t' get lost th' first half of th' way.
Listen to that wind, though! I'm glad t' be here if I do look like a
turkey gobbler with these ears," he laughed.

It was so cold that Elizabeth had built a roaring fire, and to keep the
snow, which penetrated every crack, from sifting under the door, she laid
old coats and carpets across the sill. She brought coal and cobs from the
shed, stopping each trip to get warm, for even to go the twenty steps
required to get to the cobhouse was to experience more cold than she had
ever encountered in all the days when she had plowed through the snows of
Kansas winters while teaching; in fact, had the fuel been much farther
from her door she would hardly have ventured out for it at all in a wind
which drove one out of his course at every fresh step and so confused and
blinded him that the points of the compass were a blank, and paths could
not be located for the drifts, which ran in every direction the swirling
wind chose to build them. She had gone around the shed to the back door,
knowing that the front door being on the windward side could not be shut
again if once opened, and the few extra steps necessary to creep around
the building froze her to the bone, for the eddying wind had carried the
snow deep at that point and, being enough sheltered to prevent packing,
had left it a soft pile into which she sank almost to her waist. She was
obliged to hunt for a shovel and clear the snow out of the doorway when
she was through, and her hands were completely numbed when she reached the
house after it was over. With the feeling that she might not be able to
reach the shed at all in the morning, or that the doors might be drifted
shut altogether, Elizabeth had taken enough cobs and coal into the kitchen
to half fill the room and was ready to withstand a siege of days, but she
paid toll with aching hands and feet that frightened Luther into a new
realization of the nature of the storm.

When at last the one fire Elizabeth thought it wise to keep up was rebuilt
and dry shoes had replaced the wet ones, she settled down beside the
lounge, with her feet in another chair to keep them off the cold floor,
and turned to Luther expectantly.

"This storm's awful, as you say