“I hope, Elinor, that Tibby has not started out in this, but if she has she may lose her way and freeze if some one does not find her. I have been very uneasy about her for some time.�
“Oh, how dreadful, dreadful!� And as Mrs. Wylie continued to gaze out into the opaque snow-world about her she began to realize for the first time what a western blizzard might mean. “Why did I not have sense enough to keep that child at home?� she moaned. “I shall never forgive myself if she is lost.�
“We should both of us have seconded Donald’s caution, I’m afraid,� replied Alice. “I am not so weather-wise as he, yet I should have known what such a morning in midwinter portended here. Tibby delights in teasing Donald, and of course would not heed his warning; but she would have listened to us had we been persistent.�
“I don’t know. I’m afraid I am the one who always listens to her. I don’t see why she treats Don so,� Mrs. Wylie said.
“Don’t you? I think I do. It is because she cares for him, and will not acknowledge it, even to herself. But do look at the storm, Elinor. Is it not terrifying? Where does all this snow come from? The ground is already heavily sheeted with it. And listen to the wind. How it wails and shrieks, buffets and pounds. We are fortunate in being safely housed, Elinor.�
“But if Tibby is out in it! Oh, I cannot bear the thought!�
“Hark! there is the report of Donald’s rifle. I must answer it.� And Alice sprang to the window, and raising it a little way, put forth the heavy gun and discharged it, its detonation bringing an answering shriek from Mrs. Wylie.
CHAPTER XXXI
CAUGHT IN A BLIZZARD
Tibby had foolishly dallied in her home-coming. Even after mounting her horse she sat in the saddle and indulged in the prolonged exchanges of good-bys so common to young girls, until the blackening sky and threatening flakes of snow admonished her, forcibly, to return in haste.
Tempest, glad to have permission to go at last, sped over the ground with wonderful strides, covering the first half of the journey in a short space of time; but as the wind arose and the soft flakes gave way to hard, rice-like, cutting kernels of snow that beat in his face, he became staggered in his pace, and finally, as the storm in all its fury bore down upon them, both horse and rider lost all knowledge of distance and location, their only effort being to keep the road. Tibby, blinded by the storm, and forced to ride with her head bent forward and down, felt her faithful beast stop and whirl half around as a furious blast, chill as the arctic snows, struck them. The icy flakes cut into her flesh like splinters of steel as she lifted her face to look about her. She could see nothing except the whirling deluge of white enveloping her. She was lost, lost.