fur collar beneath it, the daintily-gloved hands, and the pretty brown traveling suit.

“Dignified old fellow!” mused Bob, irrelevantly, as the couple moved to{4}ward the train gates. “Probably her father. Perhaps—hallo! by George, they’re going on my car!”

{4}

With which breath of summer in his winter of discontent the young man proceeded to finish his cigar, consult his watch, and, as the last warning bell rang, step upon the platform of the already moving Pullman.

It must be admitted that as he entered he gave an expectant glance down the aisle of the car; but the sombre curtains hanging from ceiling to floor told no tales. Too sleepy to speculate and too learned in the marvelous acoustic properties of a sleeping-car to engage the porter in conversation on the subject, he found his berth, arranged himself for the night with the nonchalance of an old traveler, and, laying his head upon his vibrating atom of a pillow, was soon plunged into a dream at least fifty miles long.{5}

{5}

II.

It was snowing, and snowing hard. Moreover, it had been snowing all night, and all the afternoon before. The wind rioted furiously over the broad Missouri plains, alternately building up huge castles of snow and throwing them down again like a fretful child; overtaking the belated teamster on his homeward journey, clutching him with its icy hand, and leaving him buried in a tomb spotless as the fairest marble; howling, shrieking, racing madly to and fro, never out of breath, always the same tireless, pitiless, awful power. Rocks, fields, sometimes even forests were blotted out of the landscape.

A mere hyphen upon the broad white page lay the Western-bound train, held fast by the soft but firm hand. The fires in the locomotives{6}—there were two of them—had been suffered to go out, the fuel in the tenders was exhausted, and the great creatures waited silently together, left alone in the storm, while the snow drifted higher and higher upon their patient backs.

{6}

When Bob had waked that morning, to find the tempest more furious than ever, and the train stuck fast in a huge snowbank, his first thought was of dismay at the possible detention in the narrow limits of the Pullman, which seemed much colder than it had before; his next was to wonder how the change of fortune would affect Gertrude 

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