the cousins disappeared in a huge drift piled high when the road was
cleared.




CHAPTER II


John was the first to return to the outer world. He stood still, seeing
the horse on its legs, Billy unharnessing, Leila for an instant lost to
sight. The boy was scared. In his ordered life it was an unequalled
experience. Then he saw a merry face above the drift and lying around it
a wide-spread glory of red hair on the white snow. In after years he
would recall the beauty of the laughing young face in its setting of dark
gold and sunlit silver snow.

"Oh, my!" she cried. "That Billy! Don't stand there, John; pull me out,
I'm stuck."

He gave her a hand and she bounded forth out of the drift, shaking off
the dry snow as a wet dog shakes off water. "What's the matter, John?"

He was trying to empty neck, pocket and shoes of snow, and was past
the limits of what small endurance he had been taught. "I shall catch
my death of cold. It's down my back--it's everywhere, and I--shall
get--laryngitis."

The brave blue eyes of the girl stared at his dejected figure. She was at
heart a gentle, little woman-child, endowed by nature with so much of