She wondered whether Stephen would kill his horse endeavoring to overtake her; she wondered whether he would ever overtake her again! Somehow it seemed to her as if the storm had caught her up bodily and were bearing her away from a very perplexing world. After all, what an amenable, unexacting sort of thing a blizzard was! How very easy to deal with! You had only to duck your head, and screw up your eyes, and cleave your way through it, and on it went, quite unconcerned with your moods and tenses! If Stephen Burns were only more like that, she thought to herself! But, alas! poor Stephen, with all his strong claims to affection and esteem, could not assert the remotest kinship with the whistling winds and blinding snow which were proving such formidable rivals! A narrow lane appeared at her right. Almost before she was aware that it was there, she had swung Sunbeam about; in another moment they were standing, with two other saddle-horses, in a little grove of trees, further protected by a small house close at hand. It seemed almost warm in that sheltered nook. Amy recognized the horses and knew that Harry de Luce and one of the girls must have taken refuge within. The lane was a short one, and she and Sunbeam stood, trembling with excitement, until they saw the shadow of a horse and rider speeding along the road toward the town. Then Amy drew a long breath of relief. "It was all nothing but a shadow," she said to herself, "and I went and thought it was real!" She slid stiffly down from the saddle and hobbled into the house, all the exultation gone from her bounding veins. It made her a bit dizzy to think of the rush of tumultuous emotions which had outvied the storm of the elements but now. By the time the friendly hostess had established her before the kitchen stove and taken away her dripping hat and coat, she felt too limp and spent to answer the eager questions that were asked. "Do something for Sunbeam," she murmured weakly to Harry de Luce, in answer to his ready offers of help. "They're going to send out a 'bus with four horses to pick up the remnants," de Luce assured her. "If you girls will go in the 'bus I will lead Sunbeam and Paddy home." And somehow it seemed so pleasant to be taken care of, just in a group with another girl and two horses, that Amy, with a faint, assenting smile, submitted to be classed with the "remnants." She felt as if she were half asleep when, an hour or more later, she sat in the corner of the great omnibus, that went lurching along through the snow, like a mudscow gone astray among ocean waves. She had an idea that everybody was talking at once, but that was just as well, since not a syllable was audible above the creaking and rattling of the big ark. Arrived at home she found the riding-crop, but no Stephen. He had called an hour ago, to ask if she had arrived safely, but he had said nothing about coming again.