"And no land can be real where you are not," he went on gravely. "I go where you go, follow you around the world and out into the stars beyond the moon, up and down and on forever, and it all seems real to me—all except you."
"Oh, I—I'm real, real enough, but this land is a sad, fearful, threatening land, so heartless." She shivered. "Let us go in!"
"That's only because it's closing up now for the winter; that's why the sky is sorry. The leaves are nearly gone, and the fat old bears are slouching down from the high places to curl up in the holes, and the deer are moving down into the valleys, and pretty soon the hills will crawl under white blankets and go to sleep. And we shall have to do the same. We shall be shut in before you know it, snowed in, frozen in, like the bears. But the winter—it can't take you from me."
"There, there!" But she could not finish. She flashed a helpless smile at him and fled indoors. He went after her, crying that winter was upon them.
And then, all in a day and a night, winter came. The wind fell to an ominous hush one midday, and a leaden quiet lay over the hills. Blurred masses of cloud rose slowly above the peaks, shaping themselves with ponderous sloth. Below these a white mist formed. Then one tiny snow crystal fell. It was followed presently by another, and then by more, floating down with unhurried ease. Meaningless wisps they seemed, fugitive bits of wool, perhaps, from a sheep losing its fleece in some nearby shearing pen. More of them came with the same slow, loitering grace, as if they would lull suspicion of the fury they heralded.
By night the storm had shut off the hills so that the cabin might have been set in a plain, for all the eye could see. The flakes no longer came saunteringly, but swiftly now, in a slant of honest fervor, frankly threatening.
By morning the land was muffled in white. The sun shone pale and cold through the mist, and the wind began a game with its new plaything, still light and dry, and quick to dance to any piping. Spruce and hemlock seemed to have darkened their green, and their arms drooped wearily under the white burdens they bore. The second day's fall buried their lowest branches so that not even the circle of bare earth was left about them.
Inside the cabin they sought the peace of the earth under its cover, the trustful repose of the live things sleeping there. The days sped by almost unmarked. Scarcely ever were they certain of the day of week or month, especially after Ben forgot to mark his calendar on the days he and Ewing devoted to getting deer for their winter's meat. There were but opinions as to the date after that.
Ben, after his work with the stock each morning, hibernated gracefully in a chair by the kitchen stove, sleeping with excited groans, like a dreaming dog. Or, awake, he stared at the wall with dulled eyes. At times he would touch his guitar to life and sing very softly, or hold it affectionately in his lap, a hand muting its strings, while he pondered dreamily of far-off matters, of cities and men, and the folly of expecting ever to receive treasure such as the advertisements promise.
Ewing and Virginia, after the snow packed, went forth on snowshoes far into the white silence; over open spaces so glaring that the eyes closed in defense; through ravines where once-noisy streams were stilled; and under forest arches of green where the snow was darkened to hints of blue—they agreed that Sydenham would paint it blue without condescending to hints—and where the hush was so intense that they instinctively lowered their voices. They passed long times without speech, as they would have done in a church, worshiping the still beauty about them, beauty of buttressed peak, of snow-choked cañon, of green-roofed cathedral, of pink light at sunset on endless snow-quilted slopes.