er petticoats with both hands as she flew along. Lived to be
a hundred and three. Hoed corn the day she died of sunstroke." The Good
Shepherd of the Hills sighed contentedly. "Deborah Partlow bein'
baptized under ice brought a heap of converts to religion."

"But that baptizin' caused me no end of anxiety," Aunt Sallie took up
the story. "That day when Dyke went out to saddle old Beck the snow was
plum up to his boot tops. The mountains were white all around and the
creek froze in a sheet of ice. But go Dyke would. I wropt his muffler
twice around his neck, got his yarn mittens and pulse warmers too and
throwed a sheep hide over the top of his wood saddle and one under
it--to ease the nag's back. He had wooden stirrups too. Made the whole
thing himself. I dreaded to see Dyke ride off that winter's day for
there was a sharp wind that come down out of the hollow and froze even
the breath of him on his long black beard till it looked white--white as
it is today. I watched him ride off. Heard the nag's feet crunching in
the snow. All of three full days and nights he was gone, for at best the
road to Hart County was rough and hard to travel. In the meantime come a
blizzard. Not a soul passed this way, so I got no word of Dyke. I
conjured a thousand thoughts in my mind. Maybe he'd met the same fate of
old man Frasher who fell over a cliff in a blinding snowstorm. Maybe the
nag had stumbled and sent Dyke headlong over some steep ridge. The
children, we had several then, could see I was troubled, though I tried
to hide it. Finally on the third night I had put our babes to bed and
was sitting by the fire too troubled to sleep. I had about give up hope
of seeing Dyke alive again. It was in the dead of night I heard a voice.
It sounded strange and far off, calling 'Hallo! Hallo!', more like a
pitiful moan it was. I lighted a pine stick at the hearth and hurried as
best I could through the snow to where the voice was coming from. I
stumbled once and fell over a stump and the pine torch fell from my
hand. It sputtered in the snow and nearly went out before I could pull
myself up to my feet. And all the time the voice seemed to be getting
farther away. But it wasn't. It was just getting weaker. In a few more
steps I come on the nag deep in a snowdrift up to its shanks and there
slumped over in the saddle was Dyke. His feet were froze fast in the
stirrups. He was numb and nigh speechless. I wropt my shawl around him
and hurried, back t