Leland, who, as she noticed, seemed desirous of changing the subject, turned to his wife.
"Would you like some tea, or anything of that kind?" he said. "If not, we had better start at once. It's forty miles to Prospect, and there's not much of the afternoon left. Still, of course, if you prefer it, they might fix you up a fairly decent room at the hotel to-night."
Carrie glanced at the little desolate town. It appeared uninviting enough, but when she spoke the words seemed to stick in her throat.
"No," she said; "I would sooner go—home."
Leland said something to the man beside him, and then led Carrie into a very dirty wooden room with a big stove in the midst of it, after which he left her to watch, with a sinking heart, the departing train clatter out into the darkness.
He came back transformed—with a battered fur cap hiding most of his face, in a very big and somewhat tattered fur coat. With a fresh shock of dismay, she noticed that he now looked very much as the others did. In another minute he had lifted her into the sleigh and wrapped the big robes about her. Then he shook the reins and they were whirled away down the long smear of trail that led straight off to the horizon.
It was beaten hard, the team were fresh and fast, and for a while the girl felt the exhilaration of the swift rush through nipping air. The desolate town faded behind her; a grey blur that lifted itself out of the horizon, and was a big birch bluff, came flitting back to her; there was deep stillness, only intensified by the screech of runners and the soft drumming of hoofs. A vast sweep of fleckless azure overhung the glistening plain below. It was not all white, however, for there were shades of grey and dusky purple in the hollows, and the trail was a wavy riband that rose and fell in varying blue. It was beautiful in its own way, and the stinging air stirred her blood like wine. That was for an hour or so; but when the sun dipped, a red, copper ball, amidst a frosty haze, and the blues and greys crept wide across the whiteness of the plain, the cold laid hold of her. Leland, who had scarcely spoken, looked down.
"Are you warm?" he said.
The girl was scarcely willing to admit that she was not; but the frost of the Northwest strikes keen and deep, and, after all, it was his business to attend to her physical comfort.
"No," she said; "I am very cold."