. "It's this or walk."

"Hmh!" said the lady, and spread a discarded newspaper upon the seat,
and sat down. "Thank you," she added perfunctorily, and looked out of
the window at what she could see of the storm.

The down train thundered in, just then, and with a squealing of brakes
stopped so that its chair car blotted her dismal view of the close
hillside. Between the two trains the snow sifted continuously, coming
out of the gray wall above, falling into the black shadows beneath.
Two or three bundled passengers with snow packed in the wrinkles of
their clothing went down the aisle of the chair-car, looking for
seats.

It was all very depressing, wearisome in the extreme. The lady settled
herself deeper into her furs and sighed.

She continued to sigh at intervals during the remainder of the trip.
The last and the heaviest sigh of all she heaved when she settled down
to sleep in a hotel bedroom and thought miserably of a certain
lovable, if somewhat headstrong, young man who was out somewhere in
these terrible mountains in the storm, hiding away from the world and
perhaps suffering cold and hunger.

Thoughts of that kind are not the best medicine for sleeplessness, and
it was long after midnight before Mrs. Singleton Corey drifted
insensibly from heartsick reflections into the inconsequent imaginings
of dreams. She did not dream about Jack, which was some comfort;
instead, she dreamed that she was presiding over a meeting of her
favorite club.

She awoke to the chill of an unheated room during a winter storm. The
quiet lulled her at first into the belief that it was yet very early,
but sounds of clashing dishes in a pan somewhere in a room beneath her
seemed to indicate breakfast. She would have telephoned down for her
breakfast to be served in her room, but there was no telephone or call
bell in sight. She therefore dressed shiveringly and groped through
narrow hallways until she found the stairs. The mournful _whoo-ooing_
of the wind outside gripped at her heartstrings. Jack was out
somewhere in this, hiding in a cave. She shivered again.

In the dining room, where two belated breakfasters hurried through
their meal, Mrs. Singleton Corey tried to pull herself together; tried
to shut out sentiment from her mind, that she might the better meet
and handle practical emergencies. It would not do, of course, to
announce her motive in coming here. She would have to find this Miss
Humphrey first of all. She unfolde