“Yes.”
Poor Wallace! His voice sounded so flat and tired! I have often wondered since whether I ought not to have made another effort to keep him where he was, and to proceed with him the next night. He might have stood it. I don’t think he quite realized what it meant getting into shelter. I believed at the time that he did. However, I acted according to my lights, without another word.
Sliding from the straw I approached the door, to stop in wonder for a moment before going down the ladder. Long icicles had grown from the upper edge of the opening almost to the floor of the loft in the few hours we had been inside, and between them the cold light of a winter morning, strongly reflected by a white, unbroken surface, met my eyes. It was eight o’clock by my watch. The icicles snapped with a glassy sound and fell noiselessly outside when I broke through their curtain.
Beyond it the world was white,—the ground, as far as I could see it; the air, thick with dancing flakes; and the sky. What mattered it now whether we stayed in the loft or sought the shelter of a farm?
CHAPTER XVIII
THE GAME IS UP
The farmhouse door was opened by a girl of about sixteen, who turned back into the kitchen to call her mother, a woman whom incessant toil seemed to have aged beyond her years.
“May I speak to your husband?” I asked politely.
“He’s not at home.”