ver the situation there came
to him with great suddenness the thought that, perhaps, after all, Life
never intended that she should be given to him only to be taken away
almost as suddenly; and seized with a desire to hold on to her at any
cost, he sprang forward as if to take her in his arms, but before he
reached her, he stopped short.

"Such happiness is not for me," he muttered under his breath; and then
aloud he added: "No, no, I've got to go now while I have the courage, I
mean." He broke off as suddenly as he had begun, and taking her face in
his hands he kissed her good-bye.

Now, accustomed as was the Girl to the strange comings and goings of the
men at the camp, it did not occur to her to question him further when he
told her that he should have been away before now. Moreover, she trusted
and loved him. And so it was without the slightest feeling of misgiving
that she watched her lover quickly take down his coat and hat from the
peg on the wall and start for the door. On the other hand, it must have
required not a little courage on the man's part to have torn himself
away from this lovely, if unconventional, creature, just as he was
beginning to love truly and appreciate her. But, then, Johnson was a man
of no mean determination!

Not daring to trust himself to words, Johnson paused to look back over
his shoulder at the Girl before plunging forth into the night. But on
opening the door all the multitudinous wild noises of the forests
reached his ears: Sounds of whispering and rocking storm-tossed pines,
sounds of the wind making the rounds of the deep canyon below them,
sounds that would have made the blood run cold of a man more daring,
even, than himself. Like one petrified he stood blinded, almost, by the
great drifts of snow that were being driven into the room, while the
cabin rocked and shook and the roof cracked and snapped, the lights
flickered, smoked, or sent their tongues of fire upward towards the
ceiling, the curtains swayed like pendants in the air, and while
baskets, boxes, and other small furnishings of the cabin were blown in
every direction.

But it was the Girl's quick presence of mind that saved them from being
buried, literally, under the snow. In an instant she had rushed past him
and closed both the outer and inner doors of the cabin; then, going over
to the window, she tried to look through the heavily frosted panes; but
the falling of the sleet and snow, striking the window like fi