"Well, I don't know about that, but I'm going to look up a place a brakeman gave me a pointer on."
"All right; here goes!"
Scarcely any one was stirring on the streets. The wind was pitilessly cold, though not strong. The snow under the feet cried out with a note like glass and steel. The windows of the stores were thick with frost, and Albert gave a shudder of fear, almost as if he were homeless. He had never experienced anything like it before.
Entering one of the stores, they found a group of men sitting about the stove, smoking, chatting, and spitting aimlessly into a huge spittoon made of boards and filled with sawdust. Each man suspended smoking and talking as the strangers entered.
"Can any of you gentlemen tell us where Mrs. Welsh lives?"
There was a silence; then the clerk behind the counter said:
"I guess so. Two blocks north and three west, next to last house on left-hand side."
"Clear as a bell!" laughed Hartley, and they pushed out into the cold again, drawing their mufflers up to their eyes.
"I don't want much of this," muttered Bert through his scarf.
The house was a large frame house standing on the edge of a bank, and as the young men waited they could look down on the meadow land, where the river lay blue and still and as hard as iron.