n correction line, one mile from town, would have been gone
over on Saturday by quite a number of teams. The snow settles down
considerably, too, in thirty hours, especially under the pressure of
wind. If a trail had been made over the drift, I was confident my horses
would find it without fail. So I dismissed all anxiety on my own score.

But all the more did the thought of my wife worry me. If only I could
have made her see things with my own eyes--but I could not. She regarded
me as an invalid whose health was undermined by a wasting illness and
who needed nursing and coddling on the slightest provocation. Instead of
drawing Nature's inference that, what cannot live, should die, she clung
to the slender thread of life that sometimes threatened to break--but
never on these drives. I often told her that, if I could make my
living by driving instead of teaching, I should feel the stronger,
the healthier, and the better for it--my main problem would have been
solved. But she, with a woman's instinct for shelter and home, cowered
down before every one of Nature's menaces. And yet she bore up with
remarkable courage.

A mile or so before I came to the turn in my road the forest withdrew on
both sides, yielding space to the fields and elbow-room for the wind
to unfold its wings. As soon as its full force struck the cutter, the
curtains began to emit that crackling sound which indicates to the
sailor that he has turned his craft as far into the wind as he can
safely do without losing speed. Little ripples ran through the bulging
canvas. As yet I sat snug and sheltered within, my left shoulder turned
to the weather, but soon I sighted dimly a curtain of trees that ran at
right angles to my road. Behind it there stood a school building, and
beyond that I should have to turn south. I gave the horses a walk. I
decided to give them a walk of five minutes for every hour they trotted
along. We reached the corner that way and I started them up again.

Instantly things changed. We met the wind at an angle of about thirty
degrees from the southeast. The air looked thick ahead. I moved into the
left-hand corner of the seat, and though the full force of the wind did
not strike me there, the whirling snow did not respect my shelter. It
blew in slantways under the top, then described a curve upward, and
downward again, as if it were going to settle on the right end of the
back. But just before it touched the back, it turned at a sharp an