"Oh, yes, indeed!" Maine said, cheerfully. "I don't know that we often have so much wind as this, but the snow is nothing out of the way. Why, on Palm Sunday last year our milkman dug through a drift twenty feet deep to get at his cows. He was the only milkman who ventured out, and he took me and the minister's wife to church in his little red pung. "We were the only women in church, I remember. Miss Betsy Follansbee, who had not missed going to church in fifteen years, started on foot, after climbing out of her bedroom window to the shed roof and sliding down. All her doors were blocked up, and she lived alone, so there was no one to dig her out. But she got stuck in a drift about half-way, and had to stay there till one of the neighbors came by and pulled her out." All the girls laughed at this, and even Miss Wayland smiled; but suddenly she looked grave again. "Hark!" she said, and listened. "Did you not hear something?" "We hear Boreas, Auster, Eurus, and Zephyrus," answered Old New York. "Nothing else." At that moment there was a lull in the screeching of the wind; all listened intently, and a faint sound was heard from without which was not that of the blast. "A child!" said Massachusetts, rising quickly. "It is a child's voice. I will go, Miss Wayland." "I cannot permit it, Alice!" cried Miss Wayland, in great distress. "I cannot allow you to think of it. You are just recovering from a severe cold, and I am responsible to your parents. What shall we do? It certainly sounds like a child crying out in the pitiless storm. Of course it _may_ be a cat--" Maine had gone to the window at the first alarm, and now turned with shining eyes. "It _is_ a child!" she said, quietly. "I have no cold, Miss Wayland. I am going, of course." Passing by Massachusetts, who had started out of her usual calm and stood in some perplexity, she whispered, "If it were freezing, it wouldn't cry. I shall be in time. Get a ball of stout twine." She disappeared. In three minutes she returned, dressed in her blanket coat, reaching half-way below her knees, scarlet leggings and gaily wrought moccasins; on her head a fur cap, with a band of sea-otter fur projecting over her eyes. In her hand she held a pair of snow-shoes. She had had no opportunity to wear her snow-shoeing suit all winter, and she was quite delighted. "My child!" said Miss Wayland, faintly. "How can I let you go? My duty to your parents--what are those strange things, and what use are you going to make of them?" By way of answer Maine slipped her feet into the snow-shoes, and, with Massachusetts' aid, quickly fastened the thongs. "The twine!" she said. "Yes, that will do; plenty of it. Tie it to the door-handle, square knot, so! I'm all right, dear; don't worry." Like a flash the girl was gone out into the howling night. Miss Wayland wrung her hands and wept, and most of the girls wept with her. Virginia, who was curled up in a corner, really sick with fright, beckoned to Massachusetts.