down around her
feet.

The snow was driving up the street in a steady wind, but Mrs.
Singleton Corey faced it undauntedly. She saw the white-veiled plaza
upon one side, the row of little stores huddled behind bare trees upon
the other side. It seemed a neat little town, a curiously placid
little town to be so buffeted by the storm. Behind it the mountain
loomed, a dark blur in the gray-white world. Beautiful, yes; but Mrs.
Singleton Corey was not looking for beauty that day. She was a mother,
and she was looking for her boy.

Two men, with two long-handled shovels, ran out from a little store
halfway down the street and, still running, threw themselves into the
back of the sleigh.

"Better go back and get another shovel," the driver advised them,
pulling up. "I forgot mine. Anything they want me to haul up? Where's
them blankets? And say, Hank, you better go into the drugstore and get
a bottle of the best liquor they've got. Brandy."

"I've got a bottle of rye," the man standing behind Mrs. Singleton
Corey volunteered. "Stop at the Forest Service, will you? They've got
the blankets there. We can get another shovel from them."

The driver spoke to his leaders, and they went on, trotting briskly
into the wind. Blurred outlines of cottages showed upon either hand.
Before one of these they stopped, and a young man came out with a roll
of canvas-covered bedding balanced upon his bent shoulders. Hank
climbed down, went in and got a shovel.

"Ain't heard anything more?" questioned the driver, in the tone one
involuntarily gives to tragedy.

The young man dumped his burden into the back of the sleigh and shook
his head. "Our men are going to stay up there till they find her," he
said. "There's a sack of grub I wish you'd take along."

He glanced at Mrs. Singleton Corey, whose dark eyes were staring at
him through her veil, and ran back into the house. Running so, with
his back turned, his body had a swing like Jack's, and her throat
ached with a sudden impulse toward weeping.

He was back in a minute with a knobby sack of something very heavy,
that rattled dully when he threw it in. "All right," he called. "Hope
yuh make it, all right."

"Sure, we'll make it! May have to shovel some--"

Again they started, and there were no more stops. They swung down a
straight bit of road where the wind swept bitterly and the hills had
drawn back farther into the blur. They drew near to one that slowly
disclosed snow-matted pin