The sun came on, valiantly stripped bare, knowing what was to be. Still louder rose the requiem of the wire. The sky smiled on. There was no token to strike with alarm these human beings, their faculties dulled by a thousand years of differentiation. "Peace and goodwill," said men; for now it was coming on to Christmastide. But the wire was seeking to betray the secret of the sky, which was resolved to carry war, to sweep these beings from the old range that once was tenantless! To the north there appeared a long, black cloud, hanging low as the trail of some far-off locomotive, new upon the land. Even the old hunters might have called it but the loom of the line of the distant sand hills upon the stream. But all at once the cloud sprang up, unfurling tattered battle flags, and hurrying to meet the sun upon the zenith battle ground. Then the old hunters and trappers saw what was betokened. A man came running, laughing, showing his breath white on the air. The agent at the depot called sharply to the cub to shut the door. Then he arose and looked out, and hurried to his sender to wire east along the road for coal, train loads of coal, all the coal that could be hurried on! This man knew the freight of the country, in and out, and he had once trapped for a living along these same hills and plains. He knew what was the meaning of the cloud, and the tall pointed spires of smoke, and the hurrying naked sun. The cloud swept up and onward, and all persons closed their doors, and said that Christmas would be cold. In a quarter of an hour they saw their chronology late by a day. In half an hour they noted a gray mist drive across the sky. There was a faint wavering and spreading and deflection at the top of the tallest spire of smoke. Somewhere, high above, there passed a swarm of vast humming bees. Out in the country, miles away from town, a baby played in the clear air, resting its plump knees in the shallow layer of chips where once a pile of wood had been. It turned its face up toward the sky, and something soft and white and cool dropped down upon its cheek. In mid-sky met the sun and the cloud, and the sun was vanquished, and all the world went gray. Then, with a shriek and a whirl of a raw and icy air which dropped, dropped down, colder and colder and still more cold, all the world went white. This snow came not down from the sky, but slantwise across the land, parallel with the earth, coming from the open side of the coldest nether hell hidden in the mysterious North. Over it sang the air spirits. Above, somewhere, there was perhaps a sky grieving at its perfidy. Across the world the Titans laughed and howled. All the elements were over-ridden by a voice which said, "I shall have back my own!" For presently the old Plains were back again, and over them rushed the wild winds in their favourite ancient game.