The sky lightened gradually, and toward noon the clouds broke so that the sun shone for a brief space, but there came no real brightness. The sun did his best, but it was little. He was trying to send his rays to the depths of the canyon, but was not succeeding very well. He is admirable at straight work, this luminary who gives us heat and light and life--but when it comes to giving quality to rays which have to be again reflected, he is only moderately efficient. The sides of the canyon laughed at him. "You may lighten and heat our enclosed depths somewhat," they said, "but you cannot give to the canyon the real sunshine. You may be lord of our solar system, but we upheaving rocks of this particular region of this particular planet can temper your force beyond all reason!" Incidents enough were occurring in Stafford's car. The porter, apparently a white man, and a blonde, was just ushering in a forlorn company of wayside travelers, and gave them seats in the vacant places, of which there were not a few, for travel was light on the line, these short February days of the year when the "Great Storm" burst, not here alone, but, later, upon the Atlantic States, and played with men and all their work for a day and a night, giving to the human pigmy a terrifying lesson of his own insignificance when the forces of Nature take hold in earnest to shake and tumble into fragments the cherished works of her ordinarily spoiled darling, Man. "This car has the best accommodations, and so they are bringing the way passengers in here," the Porter explained, as he strove to make comfortable a tearful woman, whose whole being seemed to be absorbed in the effort to make the world know that she had left her two children alone at home, while she made the five-mile journey by rail to the nearest town, and back, to buy some family stores, the nature, price and quantity of which she was by no means loth to describe in detail. "I meant to take the 'commodation," she repeated to whomsoever listened to her, "but the 'commodation didn't come, and they put me on the express, and I thought it was fine to ride on the through passenger, that never stops at our station, but I've got enough of the express, stuck all this time in the snow, and there are my poor children locked up at home." The men fidgeted in their seats, and the women, one or two of them, went to the wayside passenger and gave her the aid, comfort and support of listening to her, as the one form of consolation possible. By no means alone was the woman in her murmurings. There were others quite as querulous and restless, particularly one man, a stormy mountain character, who was a storekeeper in the town where the complaining woman lived, and who announced that he must get home somehow and at once. The day passed miserably. The prisoners had not yet settled down into a patient acquiescence with what was. CHAPTER III JOHN LIPSKY'S SIGN