the little lonely clearing. The Settlement road was simply smoothed
out of existence. The log cabin, with its low roof and one chimney,
seemed half sunken in the snow which piled itself over the lower panes
of its three tiny windows.

The log barn, and the lean-to, which served as wood-shed and
wagon-house, showed little more than the black edges of their
snow-covered roofs over the glittering and gently billowing white
expanse.

In the middle of the yard the little well-house, shaped like the top
of a "grandfather's clock," carried a thick, white, crusted cap, and
was encircled with a streaky, irregular mass of ice, which had
gradually accumulated almost up to the brim of the watering-trough.
From the cabin door to the door of the barn, and over most of the yard
space, but particularly in front of the sunward-facing lean-to, the
snow was trodden down and littered with chips and straw.

Here in the mocking sunshine huddled four white sheep, while half a
dozen hens and a red Shanghai cock scratched in the litter beside
them. The low door of the barn was tightly closed to protect the cow
and horse from the bitter cold--which the sheep, with their great
fleeces, did not seem to mind.

Inside the cabin, where an old-fashioned, high-ovened kitchen stove,
heated to the point where a dull red glow began to show itself in
spots, kept the close air at summer temperature, a slim girl with
fluffy, light hair and pale complexion stood by the table, vigorously
mixing a batter of buckwheat flour for pancakes. Her slender young
arms were streaked with flour, as was her forehead also, from her
frequent efforts to brush her hair out of her eyes by quick upward
dashes of her forearm.

On the other side of the stove, so close to it that her rugged face
was reddened by the heat, sat a massive old woman in a heavy
rocking-chair, knitting. She knitted impetuously, impatiently, as if
resenting the employment of her vigorous old fingers upon so mild a
task.

Through a clear space in one pane of the window beside her--a space
where the heat within had triumphed over the frost without--she cast
restless, keen eyes out across the yard to the place where the road,
the one link between the cabin and the settlement, lay smothered from
sight.

"It's one week to-day, Melindy," she announced in a voice of accusing
indignation, "since there's been a team got through; and it's going to
be another before they'll get the road broke out!"

"Lik