as she was a busy little housewife she found
herself singing a snatch of song as she passed back and forth from
dining-room to kitchen. He heard it, too, and smiled to himself as he
bolted the windows on the ground floor and examined the locks of the
three lower doors, and when he finally came into the kitchen with his
greatcoat on to give her his final kiss, he had but one parting
injunction to urge, and this was for her to lock and bolt the front door
after him and then forget the whole matter till she heard his double
knock at midnight.

She smiled and held up her ingenuous face.

"Be careful of yourself," she begged of him. "I hate this dark ride for
you, and on such a night too." And she ran with him to the door to look
out.

"It is certainly very dark," he responded, "but I'm to have one of
Brown's safest horses. Do not worry about me. I shall do well enough,
and so will you, too, or you are not the plucky little woman I have
always thought you."

She laughed, but there was a choking sound in her voice that made him
look at her again. But at sight of his anxiety she recovered herself,
and pointing to the clouds said earnestly:

"It's going to snow. Be careful as you ride by the gorge, Ned; it is
very deceptive there in a snowstorm."

But he vowed that it would not snow before morning and giving her one
final embrace he dashed down the path toward Brown's livery stable. "Oh,
what is the matter with me?" she murmured to herself as his steps died
out in the distance. "I never knew I was such a coward." And she paused
for a moment, looking up and down the road, as if in despite of her
husband's command she had the desperate idea of running away to some
neighbour.

But she was too loyal for that, and smothering a sigh she retreated into
the house. As she did so the first flakes fell of the storm that was not
to have come till morning.

It took her an hour to get her kitchen in order, and nine o'clock struck
before she was ready to sit down. She had been so busy she had not
noticed how the wind had increased or how rapidly the snow was falling.
But when she went to the front door for another glance up and down the
road she started back, appalled at the fierceness of the gale and at
the great pile of snow that had already accumulated on the doorstep.

Too delicate to breast such a wind, she saw herself robbed of her last
hope of any companionship, and sighing heavily she locked and bolted the
door for the nig