He sat down to his lonely meal, and ate slowly, getting up two or three times from his candle-box in a growing anxiety for Ans, using the heated poker now to clear a spot on the pane. He expressed his growing apprehension, manlike, by getting angry. "I don't see what the darn fool means by stayin' so late. It'll be dark by four o'clock, er jest as soon as that cloud over there strikes us. You couldn't beat sense into some men's heads with a club." He had eaten his dinner now, and had taken to pacing up and down the little room, which was exactly six paces long and three wide, and just high enough to permit Anson to walk erect in the highest part. "Nice fix to leave a man in, ain't it? All alone here, an' a blizzard comin' on! If I ever git out o' this country alive, I'll bet I'll know enough not to come back," he broke out, stamping his foot in a rage. "I don't see what he means by it. If he's caught in that blow, his life ain't worth a cent." CHAPTER II. HER FIRST TRIP IN A BLIZZARD. At half-past two the feelings of the silent watcher began to change. He thought more about his partner out there in the rising wind and thickening snow. The blast roared round the little cabin with a deep, menacing, rising moan, and laid to the stove-pipe a resounding lip, wailing and shouting weirdly. Bert's nervous walk quickened, and he looked so often through the pane that the frost had not time to close up. Suddenly, out of the blinding, sweeping snow, not ten rods distant, the burly form of Anson burst, head down, blindly staggering forward into the teeth of the tempest. He walked like a man whose strength was almost gone, and he carried a large bundle in his arms. Gearhart flung the door open, and called in a cheery voice to guide the struggling man to the house. He knew what it was to face such a wind. "Here ye are, ol' man! Right this way! Keep y'r head down!" Then, seeing that Anson hardly made headway against the terrible blast, he rushed out, bare-headed as he was, and caught and hurried him in and shut the door. Reeling blindly, his breath roaring like a furnace, his eyebrows hung with icicles, his face masked with crusted snow, Anson staggered in, crying hoarsely, "Take her!" then slid to the floor, where he lay panting for breath. Bert caught the bundle from his arms. A wailing, half-smothered cry came from it. "What is it, Ans?" he asked. "A kid; warm it," said the giant, trying with his numbed fingers to undo the shawl which wrapped the bundle. Bert hurriedly unwound the shawl, and a frightened child, blue-eyed and flaxen-haired--flossy as unfrosted corn-silk--was disclosed like a nubbin of corn after the husks are stripped off. "Why, it's little Flaxen Hair! Wha' d'ye bring her over for?" "'Sh!" said Anson hoarsely. "Mind how y' git her warm! Don't y' see she's froze?"