and night to my heart's content! And then--worry,
worry, worry--what might not happen! Whatever my drives were to me, to
them they were horrors. There never were watchers of weather and sky so
anxiously eager as they! And when, as it often, too often happened, the
winter storms came, when care rose, hope fell, then eye was clouded,
thought dulled, heart aflutter... Sometimes the soul sought comfort from
nearest neighbours, and not always was it vouchsafed. "Well," they
would say, "if he starts out to-day, he will kill his horses!"--or,
"In weather like this I should not care to drive five miles!"--Surely,
surely, I owe it to them, staunch, faithful hearts that they were, to
set down this record so it may gladden the lonesome twilight hours that
are sure to come...

And at last I swung west again, up the ridge and on to the yard. And
there on the porch stood the tall, young, smiling woman, and at her
knee the fairest-haired girl in all the world. And quite unconscious of
Nature's wonder-garb, though doubtlessly gladdened by it the little girl
shrilled out, "Oh, Daddy, Daddy, did du see Santa Claus?" And I replied
lustily, "Of course, my girl, I am coming straight from his palace."

FOUR. Snow

The blizzard started on Wednesday morning. It was that rather common,
truly western combination of a heavy snowstorm with a blinding northern
gale--such as piles the snow in hills and mountains and makes walking
next to impossible.

I cannot exactly say that I viewed it with unmingled joy. There were
special reasons for that. It was the second week in January; when I had
left "home" the Sunday before, I had been feeling rather bad; so my wife
would worry a good deal, especially if I did not come at all. I knew
there was such a thing as its becoming quite impossible to make
the drive. I had been lost in a blizzard once or twice before in
my lifetime. And yet, so long as there was the least chance that
horse-power and human will-power combined might pull me through at all,
I was determined to make or anyway to try it.

At noon I heard the first dismal warning. For some reason or other I
had to go down into the basement of the school. The janitor, a highly
efficient but exceedingly bad-humoured cockney, who was dissatisfied
with all things Canadian because "in the old country we do things
differently"--whose sharp tongue was feared by many, and who once
remarked to a lady teacher in the most casual way, "If you was a lidy,