e or four minutes to slip on a blanket skirt, and
soft hide moccasins, with gum boots over them, and then, muffled
shapeless in her furs, she reassured the little girls, and opened the
door again. When she had contrived to close it, the cold struck
through her to the bone as she floundered towards the team. There was
nobody she could look to for assistance, but that could not be helped,
and it was evident to her that some misfortune had befallen Hastings.

The first thing necessary was to unload the sled, and, though the
birches seldom grow to any size in a prairie bluff, some of the logs
were heavy. She was gasping with the effort when she had flung a few
of them down, after which she discovered that the rest were held up by
one or two stout poles let into sockets. Try as she would, she could
not get them out, and then she remembered that Hastings kept a whipsaw
in a shed close by. She contrived to find it, and attacked the poles
in breathless haste, working clumsily with mittened hands, until there
was a crash and rattle as she sprang clear. Then she started the team,
and the rest of the logs rolled off into the snow.

That was one difficulty overcome, but the next appeared more serious.
She must find the bluff as soon as possible, and in the snow-filled
darkness she could not tell where it lay. Even if she could have seen
anything of the kind, there was no landmark on the desolate level waste
between it and the homestead. She, however, remembered that she had
one guide. Hastings and his hired man had of late hauled a good many
loads of birch logs in, and as this had made a worn-out trail it seemed
to her just possible that she might trace it back to the bluff. No
great weight of snow had fallen as yet.

Before she set out she had a struggle with the team, for the beasts had
evidently no intention of making another journey if they could help it,
but at length she swung them into the narrow riband of trail, and
plodded away into the darkness at their heads. It was then she first
clearly realised what she had undertaken. Very little of her face was
left bare between her fur-cap and collar, but every inch of uncovered
skin tingled as though it had been lashed with thorns or stabbed with
innumerable needles. The air was thick with a fine powder that filled
her eyes and nostrils, the wind buffeted her, and there was an awful
cold--the cold that taxes the utmost strength of mind and body of those
who are forc