We were both hungry when she awoke, and in the total darkness we felt about for the dinner-basket, in which were the dinners of the children of the McConkey family with whom she had boarded, and who had gone home at noon, because the fuel was gone. We ate frozen pie, and frozen boiled eggs, and frozen bread and butter; and then lay talking and caressing each other for hours. We talked about the poor horses, for which Virginia felt a deep pity, out there in the fierce storm and the awful cold. We talked of the beautiful cutter; and finally, I explained the way in which I had robbed Gowdy of horses and robes and sleigh, and dog. “He can never have the dog back,” said she. “And to think that I am hiding out in a strawstack with a robber and a horse-thief!” Then she said she reckoned we’d have to join the Bunker gang, if we could find any of it to join. Certainly we should be fugitives from justice when the storm was over; but she for herself would rather be a fugitive always with me than to be rescued by “that man”--and it was lucky for him, too, she said, that I had licked him and shut him up in a house where he would be warm and fed; because he never would have been able to save himself in this awful storm as I had done. Nobody could have done so well as I had done. I had snatched her from the very jaws of death. “Then,” said I, “you’re mine.” “Of course I am,” she said. “I’ve been yours ever since we lived together so beautifully on the road, and in our Grove of Destiny. Of course I’m yours--and you are mine, Teunis--ain’t you?” “Then,” said I, “just as soon as we get out of here, we’ll be married.” It took argument to establish this point, but the jury was with me from the start; and finally nothing stood between me and a verdict but the fact that she must finish her term of school. I urged upon her that my house was nearer the school than was McConkey’s, and she could finish it if she chose. Then she said she didn’t believe it would be legal for Virginia Vandemark to finish a contract signed by Virginia Royall--and pretty soon I realized that she was making fun of me, and I her and kissed her until she begged my pardon.