The devil seemed in it. If the thaw would only cease before the ice bottom so laboriously constructed was destroyed! Radway vibrated between the office and the road. Men were lying idle; teams were doing the same. Nothing went on but the days of the year; and four of them had already ticked off the calendar. The deep snow of the unusually cold autumn had now disappeared from the tops of the stumps. Down in the swamp the covey of partridges were beginning to hope that in a few days more they might discover a bare spot in the burnings. It even stopped freezing during the night. At times Dyer's little thermometer marked as high as forty degrees. “I often heard this was a sort 'v summer resort,” observed Tom Broadhead, “but danged if I knew it was a summer resort all the year 'round.” The weather got to be the only topic of conversation. Each had his say, his prediction. It became maddening. Towards evening the chill of melting snow would deceive many into the belief that a cold snap was beginning. “She'll freeze before morning, sure,” was the hopeful comment. And then in the morning the air would be more balmily insulting than ever. “Old man is as blue as a whetstone,” commented Jackson Hines, “an' I don't blame him. This weather'd make a man mad enough to eat the devil with his horns left on.” By and by it got to be a case of looking on the bright side of the affair from pure reaction. “I don't know,” said Radway, “it won't be so bad after all. A couple of days of zero weather, with all this water lying around, would fix things up in pretty good shape. If she only freezes tight, we'll have a good solid bottom to build on, and that'll be quite a good rig out there on the marsh.” The inscrutable goddess of the wilderness smiled, and calmly, relentlessly, moved her next pawn. It was all so unutterably simple, and yet so effective. Something there was in it of the calm inevitability of fate. It snowed. All night and all day the great flakes zig-zagged softly down through the air. Radway plowed away two feet of it. The surface was promptly covered by a second storm. Radway doggedly plowed it out again. This time the goddess seemed to relent. The ground froze solid. The sprinklers became assiduous in their labor. Two days later the road was ready for the first sleigh, its surface of thick, glassy ice, beautiful to behold; the ruts cut deep and true; the grades sanded, or sprinkled with retarding hay on the descents. At the river the banking ground proved solid. Radway breathed again, then sighed. Spring was eight days nearer. He was eight days more behind. Chapter XI