ng far at first in order
to leave the nearest supplies for the last harvesting in deep snow.
Under Haig's instructions, she filled all the space in the caves that
would not be actually needed for their living quarters. Then she built
the logs into a square and solid pile on the platform at one side of
the entrance. These were not logs in any formidable sense, being for
the most part half-rotted fragments of tree trunks that had long been
decaying in the mold. But they were dry now, after the summer, and
they made excellent slow-burning fuel. The dead limbs she cut up into
small sticks, and filled the interstices of the heap, and all the
space between it and the wall of rock. And eventually the whole
platform was covered, and the slope on each side, until there was no
longer room for Tuesday to mount to it, and barely room for Marion
herself.

In the meantime, varying her exertions, she made several trips into
the woods for deer. After many disappointments, she succeeded, before
the snow became too deep for further expeditions, in bringing back to
the cave a splendid buck and three young does. Haig made for her a
rabbit snare, and taught her how to set it, and with this device she
had the luck to add a dozen rabbits to their store. And all this time
she was piling up every stick of wood that she could find space for,
even making a great heap at the foot of the slope to be drawn upon
before the snow should cover it.

Always the snow fell, steadily, remorselessly. Every night it snowed,
and every day more or less, with intervals of brilliant sunshine. The
wind blew with increasing violence, tossing the snow into huge drifts
upon the meadow, which Marion still saw sometimes in her wood
gathering, and sifting it in level masses among the trees, and
flinging it in great banks against the cliff. Up and up crept the
drifts and banks and levels until there came a day when she could do
no more.

And that day it seemed that she could have done no more in any kind of
weather, under any inspiration or necessity. The record of what she
did is but a footnote to the page of what she suffered. Time after
time she had sunk down in the snow and lain there exhausted until
strength came to her again from somewhere, and then had risen
_manfully_ to her work. For it was a man's work she did, with a
courage as much greater than a man's as her strength was less. She was
strong, for a woman; she had lived all her life much out of doors; and