There were busy days for all four who remained at the ranch house in making preparations for idle, comfortable days to follow. Jim brought vast quantities of wood from the basement, piling it high in the corner of the living room where it would be convenient for feeding the deep throated fireplace whose rocks would stay warm all night, hot all day, for many weeks. From the yard he brought more wood, piling it in the basement until there were only narrow passageways between the slabs and logs and the finer split stove wood. Julia superintended the placing of her kitchen supplies, secreted those little delicacies which she would require at Christmas time, arranged her canned goods and perpetually fussed and rearranged in her storeroom. Meanwhile Mrs. Leland and Wanda were everywhere at once, overseeing the moving of beds, the shifting of furniture, the making cosy of the home against the siege. And then, howling and shrieking, with deep voice shouting across the pine forests, the winter came in earnest. Martin Leland had read the signs aright; it was to be a hard winter. There came a wind storm that lasted without cessation for three days; the branches of the cedars about the house tossed like long arms grappling with an unseen foe; here and there a dead limb was wrenched from a tree trunk and hurled far out to be buried in the snow which began to fall in small, hard flakes almost congealed to hail. Then, the three days gone, the wind died down suddenly, the flakes grew larger, softer, the snow clung tenaciously to the trees and fences and eaves of house and stable. Jim in arctic shoes and mittens, his ears lost under the flaps of his cap, having sighed and bestirred himself from his snug comfort by Julia's stove, got his shovel and went up on the housetop.