"Nonsense!" said Lottie. "Our best hope is keeping our senses and a good fire."
But Bel and Addie were ready enough to take the brandy, and were soon sleeping heavily from its effects, combined with their exposure to the cold wind. Lottie could not be prevailed upon to take any.
"I want the use of my senses to-night, if ever," she said. "We must take turns in keeping awake, and you shall have the first watch, Julian."
Hemstead, at this time, was down getting the horses out of the drift, that he might tie them near the fire and also under the ledge. De Forrest set to work very zealously under the stimulus of Lottie's words and the brandy combined, and gathered the brush-wood that lay near, and piled it on the fire. Everything seemed to promise well, and the wearied girl laid herself down by the side of Bel and Addie, and was soon sleeping as naturally and peacefully as if in her luxurious apartment at home.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
IN EARNEST.
When Lottie awoke the storm had passed away. The moon, in her last quarter, was rising in pale, unclouded light over eastern mountains, and bringing into dusky outline many intervening hills.
At first, bewildered, and not knowing where she was, she rose up hastily, but after a moment the events of the preceding evening came to her, and she remembered, with gratitude, how they had found partial shelter from the storm.
With something of a child's wonder and pleasure, she looked around upon a scene more wild and strange than any she had ever seen, even in pictures of gypsy encampments. Bel and Addie were sleeping by her side as soundly as if such a nightly bivouac were an ordinary experience. In like heavy stupor De Forrest lay near the fire, though the music of his dreams was by no means sweet. He had made his watch a very brief one, and, having piled the fire high with light brush-wood that would soon be consumed, and leaving no supply on hand, he had succumbed to the combined influence of the cold and the brandy; and now, with the flames lighting up his face, he looked like a handsome bandit.
The patient horses stood motionless and shadowy, a little at one side. Above her head rose high, rocky crags, from whose crevices clung bushes and stunted trees with their crest of snow. And snow, bright and gleaming near the fire, but growing pale and ghostly, dull and leaden, in the distance, stretched away before her, as far as she could see, while from this white surface rose shrubs, evergreens, and the gaunt outline of trees, in the hap-hazard grouping of the wilderness. Where, before, the storm had rushed, with moan and shriek, now brooded a quiet which only the crackling of the flames and De Forrest's resonant nasal organ disturbed.