Unfortunately, however, he was confined to his rude bed, too ill to gather in his harvest. Eight miles away his nearest neighbors followed the “blazes”[A] on the trees through the woods and came and secured the settler’s crop for him, then departed, leaving him and his household all alone in the deep, silent forest. Days and weeks rolled along and no one came again, while the poor man got perceptibly worse. Winter at last set in with the severe cold of those days. Snow, deep and lasting, soon fell, and covered all things animate and inanimate with a pure white mantle. To have a huge pile of logs at the door was the custom of those days, to supply the winter fire in the great capacious open fire-place. Our settler had not neglected to secure the traditional and useful pile of logs before his illness. Many dreary days passed over this little snowed-in household, the husband and mainstay still sick, and gradually growing weaker. Wolves howled around the door nightly. Seeing no one out of doors, they gradually became bolder and would approach to the very door of the cabin. [A] Marks on the trees made by the axe to indicate a path or way from one spot to another in the woods. To the poor disconsolate wife’s inexpressible grief, the husband died and left her alone in her solitary loneliness with her two children, the eldest of whom was only eight years of age, and the second one just able to walk. What dreadful isolation this, with no one nearer than eight miles to help her perform the sacred rites of sepulture! Among the tools in the house was an old mattock, used in grubbing up the forest roots in the clearing. With this she attempted to dig a grave. Unfortunately for her, however, the snow had fallen later than usual in the autumn, after the ground had become frozen quite hard. All her efforts failed to penetrate through the deeply frozen crust, and she almost feared she could not bury her husband at all. To place the body out of doors she dare not, for it would only become food for the prowling wolves, and the idea was so revolting to her that she could not entertain it. Some solution, however, must be sought for the difficult problem, and this clever, self-reliant woman finally solved it.