The next morning at dawn he started for his long walk into Hangtown, taking with him all the dust he had accumulated since Fletcher’s departure. He was absent till the afternoon of the following day, when he reappeared leading a small pack-mule, laden with supplies, among which were several articles of dress for Lucy and the baby, so that they might make a fitting appearance when they rode into camp for the wedding. Lucy was overjoyed at her finery, and arrayed in it looked so pretty and so girlish that Moreau, for the first time since the scene by the creek, took her in his arms and kissed her. It was the kiss of the bridegroom and the master. The next morning when she woke the cabin was curiously dark. Going to the door to open it, she found it resisted, and went to the window. The world was wrapped in a blinding fall of snow. When Moreau came in for breakfast, he reported a blizzard outside. The cold was intense, the wind high, and the snow so fine and so torn by the gale that it was like a mist of whiteness enveloping the cabin. Already it was piled high about the walls and had to be shoveled from the door to permit of its opening. Fortunately they had collected a large amount of fire wood which was piled in the brush shed in which the man lived. During the morning Moreau took the animals from their shelter and stabled them in his. There was fodder for them and a bed of leaves, and the heat of the chimney warmed the fragile hut. All day the storm raged, and in the evening, as he and Lucy sat before the fire, they could hear the turmoil of the tempest outside, moaning through the ranks of the sentinel pines. They were silent, listening to this shouting of the unloosed elements, and feeling an indescribably sweet sense of home and shelter in their rugged cabin and each other’s society. The storm was one of those unexpected blizzards which sometimes visit the Sierras in the early winter. With brief intervals of sunshine, the snow fell off and on for nearly a month. Moreau had to exercise almost superhuman effort to keep the cabin from being buried, and, as it was, the drifts nearly covered the window. It was impossible to travel any distance, as the snow was of a fine, feathery texture which did not pack tight, and into which the wanderer sank to the arm-pits. Fortunately the last trip into Hangtown had stocked the cabin well with provisions. No cares menaced its inmates, who, warm and happy in the vast snow-buried solitudes of the mountains, led an enchanted existence, forgetting and forgotten by the world.