A severe snow-storm had raged for over twelve hours, and the home missionary was twenty miles away from head-quarters. His little Indian pony was "all grit," as one of the settlers said, but with darkness only two hours away, the preacher began to reconsider his decision to make The Valley and home that night. Not a few days "Queenie" and her driver had travelled fifty miles, but to-day the drifting snow almost blinded man and beast, and with eleven miles of unbeaten path on the storm-swept plain immediately before him, the missionary hesitated. At best it would be dark before he reached the bush, and he had not forgotten a former experience, when anxious hours were spent in a similar storm seeking to find the rarely-travelled road that led from the plain through the bush to The Valley. One reason out of several that made him anxious to get home was the fact that Widow Nairn's wood-pile needed replenishing. She was a poor friendless old woman, who had remained on a plot of ground to which she had only "squatter's rights," and while the few scattered neighbours were kindness itself, the widow was, as Grayson said, so "blamed peculiar" that it was "hard to know how to do anything for her without making her mad." Perhaps she could get along for one more day, and the missionary resolved to drive directly to her shack the next morning. The decision being made, he spoke cheerily to his pony, and after a little manoeuvring, the cutter was turned around and Queenie was headed towards the spot where two solitary pines rose like sentinels from the underbush. The road to Pearson's was not far beyond these landmarks, and the home was one of the few he knew in this rarely-visited district. An hour later he peered anxiously through the storm. The snow melting around his eyes made seeing difficult, and he began to fear he had taken a wood-path instead of the one intended. Pulling up his pony, he listened for the jingle of bells, the bark of a dog, the call of a settler, or anything that might help him to locate some abode, but no sound except that made by the winter wind reached him. Tying his pony to a poplar, he plunged ahead in an endeavour to find out something about the road he was on. In a few minutes he saw that the trees closed together again, and knew that the pony had taken the wrong track. Once more the cutter was turned around with considerable difficulty. It was a hard return journey; every sign of their own recently-made track was gone, and the snow was still falling. No more welcome sound had been heard by any ears that day than when distinct, though somewhat distant, the tired traveller heard the bark of a dog. Stopping his pony, he engaged in a barking contest, until he was sure of the direction from which the sound came. "We are all right now, thank God," he said aloud.