On that night, snow was pouring itself down the narrow canyon in a crowded whirl of dry, clean flakes. Wen Ho, watchful, for his master was already a day or so beyond the promised date of his return, had started a fire on the hearth and spread a single cover on the table. He had drawn the green-and-gold curtains as though there had been anything but whirling whiteness to look in and stood warming himself with a rubbing of thin, dry hands before the open blaze. The real heat of the house, and it was almost unbearably hot, came from the stoves in kitchen and bedrooms, but this fire gave its quota of warmth and more than its quota of that beauty so necessary to Prosper Gael. Wen Ho put his head from one side to the other and stopped rubbing his hands. He had heard the packing of snow under webs and runners. After listening a moment, he nodded to himself, like a figure in a pantomime, ran into the kitchen, did something to the stove, then lighted a lantern and pattered out along the tunnel dodging the icicle stalactites. Between the firs he stopped and held his lantern high so that it touched a moving radius of flakes to silver stars. Back of him through the open door streamed the glow of lamp and fire filling the icicles with blood and flushing the walls and the roof of the cave. Down the canyon Prosper shouted, "Wen Ho! Wen Ho!" The Chinaman plunged down the trail, packed below the new-fallen snow by frequent passage, and presently met the bent figure of his master pulling and breathing hard. Without speaking, Wen Ho laid hold of the sled rope and together the two men tugged up the last steep bit of the hill. "Velly heavy load," said Wen. Prosper's eyes, gleaming below the visor of his cap, smiled half-maliciously upon him. "It's a deer killed out of season," he said, "and other cattle--no maverick either--fairly marked by its owner. Lend me a hand and we'll unload." Wen showed no astonishment. He removed the covering and peeped slantwise at the strange woman who stared at him unseeingly with large, bright eyes. She closed them, frowning faintly as though she protested against the intrusion of a Chinese face into her disturbed mental world. The men took her up and carried her into the house, where they dressed her wound and laid her with all possible gentleness in one of the two beds of stripped and lacquered pine that stood in the bedroom facing the lake. Afterwards they moved the other bed and Prosper went in to his meal. He was too tired to eat. Soon he pushed his plate away, turned his chair to face the fire, and, slipping down to the middle of his spine, stuck out his lean, long legs, locked his hands back of his head, let his chin fall, and stared into the flames. Wen Ho removed the dishes, glancing often at his master. "You velly tired?" he questioned softly. "It was something of a pull in the storm." "Velly small deer," babbled the Chinaman, "velly big lady."