Preposterous as such questions would formerly have seemed, they did not impress me as quite absurd as I sat alone on the straw-covered floor of my log cave, gazing into the flames that smacked their lean lips rabidly, and listening to the gale that rushed by with a torrential roaring. Like a child who fears to have strayed into a goblin's den, I was unnerved and unmercifully the prey of my own imagination; I could not keep down the thought that there was something weird about my hosts. Now, as rarely before during my exile, I was filled with an overpowering longing for home and friends, for familiar streets, and safe, well-known city haunts; and I could almost have wept at the impossibility of escape. Except for Yasma--Yasma, whose gentleness held me more firmly than iron chains--I would have prayed to leave this dreary wilderness and never return. Finally, in exhaustion as much of the mind as of the body, I sank down upon my straw couch, covered myself with my goatskin coat, and temporarily lost track of the world and its vexations. But even in sleep I was not to enjoy peace; confused dreams trailed me through the night; and in one, less blurred than the others, I was again with Yasma, and felt her kiss upon my cheek, wonderfully sweet and compassionate, and heard her murmur that I must not be sad or impatient but must wait for her till the spring. But even as she spoke a dark form intruded between us, and sealed our lips, and forced her away until she was no more than a specter in the far distance. And as in terror I gazed at the dark stranger, I recognized something familiar about her; and with a cry of alarm, I awoke, for the pose and features were those of Yulada! Hours must have passed while I slept; the fire had smoldered low, and only one red ember, gaping like a raw untended wound, cast its illumination across the cabin. But through chinks in the walls a faint gray light was filtering in, and I could no longer hear the wind clamoring. An hour or two later I arose, swallowed a handful of dried herbs by way of breakfast, and forced open the cabin door. It was an altered world that greeted me; the clouds had rolled away, and the sky, barely tinged with the last fading pink and buff of dawn, was of a pale, unruffled blue. But a white sheet covered the ground, and mantled the roofs of the log huts, and wove fantastic patterns over the limbs of leafless bushes and trees. All things seemed new-made and beautiful, yet all were wintry and forlorn--and what a majestic sight were the encircling peaks! Their craggy shoulders, yesterday bare and gray and dotted with only an occasional patch of white, were clothed in immaculate snowy garments, reaching far heavenward from the upper belts of the pines, whose dark green seemed powdered with an indistinguishable spray.