It rattled loose window-casings in the hotel, so that people turned uneasily in their beds. It sent strange creatures of the imagination to prowl about. Cowmen thought of the depleted herds when the riders should come in off the free ranges in the Spring should that moaning wind mean a real northwester. Louise was awakened by a sudden shriek of wind that swept through the slight aperture left by the raised window and sent something crashing to the floor. She lay for a moment drowsily wondering what had fallen. Was it anything that could be broken? She heard the steady push of the wind against the frail frame building, and knew she ought to compel herself sufficiently to be aroused to close the window. But she was very sleepy. The crash had not awakened Mary. She was breathing quietly and deeply. But she would be amenable to a touch—just a light one—and she did not mind doing things. How mean, though, to administer it in such a cause. She could not do it. The dilapidated green blind was flapping dismally. What time was it? Maybe it was nearly morning, and then the wind would probably go down. That would save her from getting up. She snuggled under the covers and prepared to slip deliciously off into slumber again. But she couldn’t go to sleep after all. A haunting suspicion preyed on her waking faculties that the crash might have been the water pitcher. She had been asleep and could not gauge the shock of the fall. It had seemed terrific, but what awakens one from sleep is always abnormal to one’s startled and unremembering consciousness. Still, it might have been the pitcher. She cherished no fond delusion as to the impenetrability of the warped cottonwood flooring. Water might even then be trickling through to the room below. She found herself wondering where the bed stood, and that thought brought her sitting up in a hurry only to remember that she was over the musty sitting room with its impossible carpet. She would be glad to see it soaked—it might put a little color into it, temporarily at least, and lay the dust of ages. But, sitting up, she felt herself enveloped in a gale of wind that played over the bed, and so wisely concluded that if she wished to see this court through without the risk of grippe or pneumonia complications, she had better close that window. So she slipped cautiously out of bed, nervously apprehensive of plunging her feet into a pool of water. It had not been the pitcher after all. Even after the window was closed, there seemed to be much air in the room. The blind still flapped, though at longer intervals. If it really turned cold, how were they to live in that barn-like room, she and Mary? She thought of the campers out on the flat and shivered. She looked out of the window musingly a moment. It was dark. She wondered if Gordon had come home. Of course he was home. It must be nearly morning. Her feet were getting cold, so she crept back into bed. The next thing of which she was