"Here is a hill," he said, without joy, and he uncovered his eyes again to seek shelter. He did not find it there, but farther on, in another hill, was a rocky alcove that in earlier days had been the den of some wild animal. It was carpeted with old dead leaves, and it faced the east, while the wind and the snow came from the southwest. It was only a hollow, running back three or four feet, and one must crouch to enter; but except near the door there was no snow in it, and the storm drove by in vain. "Here is our house, Sylvia," exclaimed Harley, with a strong ring in his voice, and he drew her in. He raked up the old, musty, dead leaves in a heap, and made her sit upon them. He was the man now, the masculine animal who ruled, and she obeyed without protest. "Hark to the storm! How the wind whistles!" he said. Pyramids and columns of snow whirled by the mouth of their little hollow, and they crouched close together. Out upon the plain the shriek of the wind was weird and unearthly. Now and then some blast, fiercer and more tortuous than the rest, drove a fringe of snow so far into the hollow that it fell a wet skim across their faces. Sylvia did not move or speak for a long time, and when Harley looked out again the snow was thinner but the wind was still high, and it was growing much colder. The blast lashed his face with a whip of ice. He turned back in alarm, and took Sylvia's hand in his. It was cold, and it seemed to him that the blood in it had ceased to run. "Sylvia! Sylvia!" he cried in fear, and not knowing what else to say. "What is the matter?" "This, I think, is death," she replied, in sleepy content. It was dark in the hollow, whether the darkness of coming night or the darkness of the storm Harley did not know nor care. He could not see her face, but he touched it; it, too, was cold. He felt a pang of agony. When both expected to die he had neither fear nor sorrow; now she was about to die alone and leave him! "Sylvia! Sylvia!" he cried. "It is not death! You cannot go!" He rubbed her hands violently, and even her cheeks. He called to her over and over again, and she awoke from her numbing torpor. "It was beginning to be like an easy sleep," she said. "That is what we must fight," said Harley. He brushed up all the leaves at the mouth of the hollow as a sort of barrier, and he believed that it gave help. Then he sat down on a small ledge of stone and leaned against the wall. "Sylvia," he said, "I want you to live, and you cannot live if this cold creeps into your body again. Sit here." She hesitated, and in the darkness he did not see her blush. "Why should you not? It may be our last day."