ey found it had done so however, when they descended to the sleigh.
That vehicle had been brought close to the porch, that the girls might
not have to walk through the deep snow. The air was so full of the
whirling white particles that from the farther end of the sleigh one
could barely see the horses.

"I declare, I don't feel just easy about you folks starting out," said
the farmer whose guests they had been. "Better watch the road some
careful, you driver. I suppose you know it pretty well."

"He doesn't, but I do!" called a tall youth from the driver's seat.
"I'll keep him straight. We'll be all right. We're due home at midnight,
and we'll be there, unless the roads are too heavy to keep the pace we
came in."

"No, sir, we can't ever keep the pace we come in," presently averred the
man from the livery-stable, who was driving. "The road's pretty heavy. I
declare, I don't know as I ever see snow so thick. Do I turn a little to
the right here or do I keep straight ahead?"

"Straight ahead," answered the boy beside him, confidently. "I've been
over this road a thousand times, and it doesn't bend to the right for
half a mile yet."

"It's lucky you know," said the driver. "I'm all at sea already. Can't
see the fences only now and then. I'd ha' swung off there, sure, if you
hadn't said not."

As the rising wind began to whirl snowily about their ears and necks,
the party turned up their coat-collars and tucked in their fur robes.
The horses were plowing with increasing difficulty through the heavily
drifted roads, and more than once their driver found himself obliged to
make a long detour around a drift which had not been in the road when
they first came over it. Moreover, in spite of the snow, the air seemed
to have grown colder and to be acquiring a penetrating, icy quality
which at last made Jeff declare to Evelyn:

"You may say you're not cold, but I'm going to insist on your letting me
wrap this steamer rug found your shoulders, with the corner over your
head, so. Now doesn't that keep off a lot of wind?"

"Indeed it does, thank you," admitted Evelyn, with a little shiver she
could not quite conceal.

"You _are_ cold!" Jeff said, anxiously.

"No colder than anybody else. Please don't worry about me."

But he did worry, and with reason. Indeed, although nobody was willing
yet to admit it, the situation was becoming a little unpleasant. In
spite of the stout confidence of the boy on the seat with the driver