ng
bitterness by the memory of that scornful "No, sir." So he replied
coldly, "I 'm not in the habit of being left behind in deserts, and
I don't know what it is customary to do in such cases. I see nothing
except to wait for the next train, which will come along some time
within twenty-four hours."

There was another long silence, after which she said in a timid voice,
"Had n't we better walk to the next station?"

At the suggestion of walking he glanced at her close-fitting dress, and
a sardonic grin slightly twitched the corners of his mouth as he dryly
answered, "It is thirty miles one way and twenty the other to the first
station."

Several minutes passed before she spoke again, and then she said, with
an accent almost like that of a child in trouble and about to cry, "I 'm
cold."

The strong, unceasing wind, blowing from snowy mountain-caverns across
a plain on which there was not the slightest barrier of hill or tree to
check its violence, was indeed bitterly cold, and Lombard himself felt
chilled to the marrow of his bones. He took off his overcoat and offered
it to her.

"No," said she, "you are as cold as I am."

"You will please take it," he replied, in a peremptory manner; and she
took it.

"At this rate we shall freeze to death before midnight," he added, as
if in soliloquy. "I must see if I can't contrive to make some sort of a
shelter with this sagebrush."

He began by tearing up a large number of bushes by the roots. Seeing
what he was doing, Miss Dwyer was glad to warm her stiffened muscles by
taking hold and helping; which she did with a vigor that shortly reduced
her gloves to shreds and filled her fingers with scratches from the
rough twigs. Lombard next chose an unusually high and thick clump of
brush, and cleared a small space three feet across in the centre of it,
scattering twigs on the uncovered earth to keep off its chill.

"Now, Miss Dwyer, if you will step inside this spot, I think I can build
up the bushes around us so as to make a sort of booth which may save us
from freezing."

She silently did as he directed, and he proceeded to pile the brush
which they had torn up on the tops of the bushes left standing around
the spot where they were, thus making a circular wall about three feet
high. Over the top he managed to draw together two or three bushes, and
the improvised wigwam was complete.

The moonlight penetrated the loose roof sufficiently to reveal to each
other the face