w it was hollow--nothing supported
the bridge--it was a mere arch, with a vault underneath that looked
temptingly sheltered and cosy to wearied eyes.

The dam was bare, and I had to pull off to the east, on to the swampy
plain. I gave my horses the lines, and slowly, slowly they took me home!
Even had I not always lost interest here, to-day I should have leaned
back and rested. Although the horses had done all the actual work, the
strain of it had been largely on me. It was the after-effect that set in
now.

I thought of my wife, and of how she would have felt had she been
able to follow the scenes in some magical mirror through every single
vicissitude of my drive. And once more I saw with the eye of recent
memory the horses in that long, endless plunge through the corner of the
marsh. Once more I felt my muscles a-quiver with the strain of that last
wild struggle over that last, inhuman drift. And slowly I made up my
mind that the next time, the very next day, on my return trip, I was
going to add another eleven miles to my already long drive and to take a
different road. I knew the trail over which I had been coming so far was
closed for the rest of the winter--there was no traffic there--no trail
would be kept open. That other road of which I was thinking and which
lay further west was the main cordwood trail to the towns in the south.
It was out of my way, to be sure, but I felt convinced that I could
spare my horses and even save time by making the detour.

Being on the east side of the dam, I could not see school or cottage
till I turned up on the correction line. But when at last I saw it, I
felt somewhat as I had felt coming home from my first big trip overseas.
It seemed a lifetime since I had started out. I seemed to be a different
man.

Here, in the timber land, the snow had not drifted to any extent.
There were signs of the gale, but its record was written in fallen tree
trunks, broken branches, a litter of twigs--not in drifts of snow. My
wife would not surmise what I had gone through.

She came out with a smile on her face when I pulled in on the yard. It
was characteristic of her that she did not ask why I came so late; she
accepted the fact as something for which there were no doubt compelling
reasons. "I was giving our girl a bath," she said; "she cannot come."
And then she looked wistfully at my face and at the horses. Silently
I slipped the harness off their backs. I used to let them have their