I thanked him, and would have asked him several questions which were
then troubling me, but he shyly slipped to the door and vanished.

A shadow seemed to fall on the room when he had gone. The "boys"
returned, one by one, and shuffled to their old places. A larger log was
thrown on the fire, and the huge chimney glowed like a furnace, but it
did not seem to melt or subdue a single line of the hard faces that it
lit. In half an hour later, the furs which had served as chairs by
day undertook the nightly office of mattresses, and each received its
owner's full-length figure. Mr. Tryan had not returned, and I missed
George. I sat there until, wakeful and nervous, I saw the fire fall and
shadows mount the wall. There was no sound but the rushing of the
wind and the snoring of the sleepers. At last, feeling the place
insupportable, I seized my hat and opening the door, ran out briskly
into the night.

The acceleration of my torpid pulse in the keen fight with the wind,
whose violence was almost equal to that of a tornado, and the familiar
faces of the bright stars above me, I felt as a blessed relief. I ran
not knowing whither, and when I halted, the square outline of the house
was lost in the alder bushes. An uninterrupted plain stretched before
me, like a vast sea beaten flat by the force of the gale. As I kept on I
noticed a slight elevation toward the horizon, and presently my progress
was impeded by the ascent of an Indian mound. It struck me forcibly as
resembling an island in the sea. Its height gave me a better view of
the expanding plain. But even here I found no rest. The ridiculous
interpretation Tryan had given the climate was somehow sung in my ears,
and echoed in my throbbing pulse as, guided by the star, I sought the
house again.