freedom for a while on reaching home. And never yet but Peter at least
had had a kick and a caper and a roll before they sought their mangers.
To-day they stood for a moment knock-kneed, without moving, then shook
themselves in a weak, half-hearted way and went with drooping heads and
weary limbs straight to the stable.

"You had a hard trip?" asked my wife; and I replied with as much cheer
as I could muster, "I have seen sights to-day that I did not expect to
see before my dying day." And taking her arm, I looked at the westering
sun and turned towards the house.

FIVE. Wind and Waves

When I awoke on the morning after the last described arrival at "home,"
I thought of the angry glow in the east at sunrise of the day before.
It had been cold again over night, so cold that in the small cottage,
whatever was capable of freezing, froze to its very core. The frost had
even penetrated the hole which in this "teacher's residence" made shift
for a cellar, and, in spite of their being covered with layer upon layer
of empty bags, had sweetened the winter's supply of potatoes.

But towards morning there had been a let-up, a sudden rise in
temperature, as we experience it so often, coincident with a change in
the direction of the wind, which now blew rather briskly from the south,
foreboding a storm.

I got the horses ready at an early hour, for I was going to try the
roundabout way at last, forty-five miles of it; and never before had I
gone over the whole of it in winter. Even in summer I had done so only
once, and that in a car, when I had accompanied the school-inspector on
one of his trips. I wanted to make sure that I should be ready in time
to start at ten o'clock in the morning.

This new road had chiefly two features which recommended it to me.
Firstly, about thirty-eight miles out of forty-five led through a fairly
well settled district where I could hope to find a chain of short-haul
trails. The widest gap in this series of settlements was one of two
miles where there was wild land. The remaining seven miles, it is true,
led across that wilderness on the east side of which lay Bell's farm.
This piece, however, I knew so well that I felt sure of finding my
way there by night or day in any reasonable kind of weather. Nor did I
expect to find it badly drifted. And secondly, about twenty-nine miles
from "home" I should pass within one mile of a town which boasted
of boarding house and livery stable, offering t