The end of the day was near, and the night promised to be very cold. Autumn might be lingering yet in the low-lands, but up here in the mountains, close to the skies, winter was sovereign. The sun went over the hills, the whiteness of the earth turned to pallor, and in the dusk the icy mountains gleamed cheerless and cold. I was very glad that necessity bade us stay at the hut. We bestirred ourselves and gathered wood, for we intended to keep a good fire all night. We assigned Grace to one corner beside the fireplace, and made a screen for it by hanging up two or three deerskins. Then we heaped the wood on the fire until the blaze roared up the chimney. A little window, a mere cut in the logs, a half-foot square, was left open. When I went out I could see the light of the fire shining through it, and casting long streaks of red across the ice, the one friendly beacon in the dreary wilderness. As the day waned and the night took its place, I began to fear that it was neither the colonel nor the doctor who had built the fire, or surely he would have returned before this. After all, it might have been some stray hunter or mountaineer who had lighted the comfortable blaze, warmed himself, and passed on, leaving it to serve the same purpose for any other who might come. At that point the mountains were more accessible than farther back toward Fort Defiance. One might penetrate them in several directions if he were willing to risk falls on the sheet ice. Several of us, taking our alpenstocks, explored the neighborhood again. The light was sufficient, the reflection from the ice throwing a kind of pale glow over everything. But our explorations brought no profit, and, the night, as we had expected, turning very cold, we returned to the hut. We stacked our rifles against the wall and composed ourselves for rest. We did not realize, until the necessity for exertion was over, how very tired we were. Grace retired to her curtained corner, and in a few minutes was so still there that we knew she must be asleep despite anxiety. Some of the soldiers stretched themselves upon the floor, and they, too, soon slept. Another, sitting upon a stool, with his head against the wall, snored placidly. We saw no necessity for keeping watch, and even the vigilant Crothers lay down upon the bench, where his eyes soon closed and his breathing became long and regular. The last army of the Confederacy was sound asleep, and the colonel's Yankee spy alone was awake. They were old, men mostly, heads gray, almost white, and faces deeply seamed, like the colonel's. But they looked to me like a loyal lot, and my sympathy went out to these old fellows, every one of whom I had no doubt carried old scars on his body. I was sitting on a stone before the fire, trying to read my fortune in the deep bed of coals. Tiring of the vain pursuit, I walked to the little window. The old soldiers slept such a tired and heavy sleep that my footsteps did not disturb them.