ing the
milkpails on her arm to save a trip back for them, she went to the barn.

The barn door stuck, with the snow which had collected in the runway, and
she had to fumble for some time before it would come open. A perfect babel
of voices greeted her. Jake had left the south door of the barn ajar when
he left that morning, and the eddying snow had banked itself along the
entire centre of the building. Patsie stood in the stall nearest the door,
humped up with the cold, and with a layer of snow on her hips and
spreading black tail. She turned sidewise and pawed furiously, giving
shrill little whinnies as Elizabeth seized a half-bushel measure and waded
through the snow to the oats bin.

"No, corn's better this cold weather," the girl said aloud, and hurried to
the other bin. Soon the horses were making noise enough to inflame the
appetites of the other animals, who redoubled their cries.

She investigated the pens and found the hogs in good condition, but the
drifts so high as to make it possible for them to make neighbourly visits
from pen to pen, and even into the cattle yard. It was a struggle to carry
the heavy ear corn from the crib to the pens, but it was done, and then
Elizabeth turned her attention to the excited cattle.

Taking time to rest and get her breath, Elizabeth noticed that a few of
the hogs had not come to get their feed, and went to investigate the
cause. They seemed to be fighting over some choice morsel on the far side
of the cattle yard. At first she thought that it was one of their number
that they were fighting about, but as she approached the knot, one of them
ran off to one side dragging something, its head held high to avoid
stepping on the grewsome thing it carried. One of the young cows had lost
her calf in the freezing storm, and the hogs were fighting over its torn
and mangled body. Elizabeth sought out the little mother, and segregating
her from the herd, drove her into the straw cow-stable, where she would be
sheltered. The other milch cows had been left in their stalls by the men
the day before, and snorted and tugged at their ropes as the newcomer
appeared. Elizabeth tied the heifer, and then shut the door after her and
returned to the unprotected herd outside.

The fodder was so full of snow that it was impossible for the girl to
handle it at all, so she dug the ladder out of the snow and placed it
against the long hayrick beside the fence and forked the hay over into the
racks