So these two began their strange life together. As may be supposed, it was wholly devoid of true companionship, and necessarily so. That made it the harder, in a way, for both. From the severe furnishings of his larder the host did his best to provide for her comfort. She never complained of the coarse, inadequate food, all of which had to be of a kind that could bear keeping for months, and none of which was pleasing to a fastidious taste made all the more delicate by illness and prostration from her injuries. All of the countless attentions that her helplessness imposed upon him he gave with the business-like directness of a physician and nurse, and this was obviously gratifying to her. She never complained of the cruel hardness of the bed, and never failed to express her gratitude for the slight shiftings of position that he deemed it safe to give her. Most cheering to the host was the fair progress that his patient made. Her curious mistake that he was Dr. Malbone had given him a mastery of the situation that was of inestimable value. Manifestly she reposed full confidence in his skill, and he made the most of that. She never again asked for opinions concerning her father’s return. Her only inquiries were with regard to the weather, the severity of which did not relax from day to day, from week to week. When Wilder would return from short excursions over the snow, which now lay deep throughout the mountains and was steadily growing deeper, she would look at him a moment expectantly, hoping for good news; but it was not necessary for him to say that there was none, and she asked no questions. The dread and dismay of Wilder grew with the heaping up of snow about the hut. Before he built the house, he had learned that in winter, when the storms were very severe, the shelf upon which he had reared the structure was banked with snow, but to what height no one had ever ascertained. There had never been such a storm as this within the memory of the white settlers. Hence the snow was heaped higher than ever before. There were special reasons for this. The shelf formed an eddying-point for the wind that came in the intervals of the snowfall, and the snow from all sides was thus swirled and pitched upon the shelf. It had not yet reached the roof, but it had to be kept cleared from the window and the front door, and that meant watchfulness and labor. Should it continue to accumulate until it reached the roof and the top of the chimney, a serious situation would confront the prisoners. Not while the patient remained helpless was there anything but a rigid business bearing between these two unhappy mortals. Between them was reared an impalpable wall that neither cared to attack. But in time the patient grew better and stronger both in body and mind; and, besides, strange developments began to make themselves felt.