g stood between me and a verdict but the
fact that she must finish her term of school. I urged upon her that my
house was nearer the school than was McConkey's, and she could finish it
if she chose. Then she said she didn't believe it would be legal for
Virginia Vandemark to finish a contract signed by Virginia Royall--and
pretty soon I realized that she was making fun of me, and I hugged her
and kissed her until she begged my pardon.

And all the time the storm raged. We finished the food in the dinner
pail, and began wondering how long we had been imprisoned, and how
hungry we ought to be by this time. I was not in the least hungry
myself; but I began to feel panicky for fear Virginia might be starving
to death. She had a watch, of course, as a teacher; but it had run down
long ago, and even if it had not, we could not have lit a match in that
place by which to look at it. Becoming really frightened as the thought
of starvation and death from thirst came oftener and oftener into my
mind, I dug my way to the opening of the burrow, and found it black
night, and the snow still sweeping over the land; but there was hope in
the fact that I could see one or two bright stars overhead. The gale was
abating; and I went back with this word, and a basket of snow in lieu
of water.

Whether it was the first night out or the second, I did not know, and
this offered ground for argument. Virginia said that we had lived
through so much that it had probably made the time seem longer than it
was; but I argued that the time of holding her in my arms, kissing her,
telling her how much I loved her, and persuading her to marry me as
soon as we could get to Elder Thorndyke's, made it seem shorter--and
this led to more efforts to make the time pass away. Finally, I dug out
again, just as we both were really and truly hungry, and went back after
Virginia. I made her wrap up warmly, and we crawled out, covered with
chaff, rumpled, mussed up, but safe and happy; and found the sun shining
over a landscape of sparkling frost, with sun-dogs in the sky and
millions of bright needles of frost in the air, and a light breeze still
blowing from the northwest, so bitingly cold that a finger or cheek was
nipped by it in a moment's exposure. And within forty rods of us was the
farmstead of Amos Bemisdarfer; who stood looking at us in amazement as
we came across the rippled surface of the snow to his back door.

"I kess," said Amos, "it mus' have peen you