So, in high spirits, they planned for their winter. There were long hours, and little diversion, and the desolation of bleak, snowbound prairies on every side, but through it all they kept up their courage and their hopefulness. Mary spent much time with her needle, from which John, when he felt she was applying herself too closely, beguiled her to a game of checkers or an hour with one of their few but valued books. To supplement their reading matter Mrs. Morrison sent over her little library, which consisted of "The Life of David Livingstone" and a bound number of "The Gospel Tribune." And there were frequent visits and long evenings spent about a cosy fire, when the Morrisons, or the Grants, or the Rileses, dropped in to while away the time. The little sod house was warm and snug, and as the men played checkers while the women sewed, what cared the pioneers for the snow and the cold and the wind whistling across the plains?
***
At last came the crisis. At four in the afternoon Harris kissed his wife an affectionate farewell, hitched his horses to the sleigh, and started out posthaste for Plainville. The sun, hanging low to the western horizon, was banded by a great ring of yellow and gold, bulging into two dull reflected glows at either side. A ground-drift of snow whipped keenly across the hard crust, and the north-west wind had a rip to it, but overhead the sky was clear and the blue amazingly deep. Harris drove by way of the Morrisons, where a few low words sent Tom to the stable at a trot to hitch his own team, while the good wife bustled about in the "room," almost overwhelmed with the importance of her mission.
"I will go for the doctor, Jack, and you go back and take the wife with you," was Morrison's kindly offer, but Harris would not agree. It was dark by this time, and he felt that he could trust no one else to make the journey to Plainville. Besides, there was more than a chance that Dr. Blain might be incapable, and in that case it meant a drive of thirty miles farther.
"It's good of you, Morrison," he said, "but you are more used to your wife's'bidding than I am, and you can be of good service there, if you will." And without waiting to argue he sprang into his sleigh again and was whipping his team into the darkness.
Dr. Blain, when at home, was to be found at the stopping-place. Harris tied his team at the door and went in, shaking the snow and frost from his great-coat. The air inside was close and stifling with tobacco, not unmixed with stronger fumes. A much-smoked oil lamp, hung by a wall-bracket, shed a certain sickly light through the thick air, and was supplemented in its illumination by rays from the door of a capacious wood stove which stood in the centre of the room, and about which half a dozen men were sitting.
"Night, Harris," said the landlord, who had a speaking acquaintance with every settler within twenty miles. "Ye're drivin' late. Ye'll have a bite supper, an' stable the team?"
"No, Hank, not to-night, thanking you the same. But I'm after Dr. Blain, and I'm in a hurry. Is he here, and—is he fit?" There was an anxiety in the last words that did not escape the host.
"Nothin' ser'ous, I hope? Frost, or somethin'?" Then, without waiting for reply, he continued: "Yes, doctor's here. Upstairs, bed to the right as ye go up. Just got in a little back. As for fit—dig 'im out an' judge for yourself."
Harris lost no time in scaling the ladder which led to the upper half-storey of the building. It was a garret—nothing better—where the cold stars looked through knot-holes in the poplar shingles, and the ends of the shingle-nails were tipped with frost. Another wall-lamp burned uncertainly here, flickering in the wind that whistled through the cracks in the gables, and by its light Harris found "the bed to the right." The form of a man lay diagonally across it, face downward, with arms extended above the head, and so still that Harris paused for a moment in a strange alarm. Then he slipped his hand on the doctor's neck and found it warm.