certain degree of sublimity. It did her good, she privately informed
the Duchess. "Just you go out there and cuss, and see." She then set
herself to the task of amusing "the child," as she and the Duchess
were pleased to call Piney. Piney was no chicken, but it was a
soothing and original theory of the pair thus to account for the fact
that she didn't swear and wasn't improper.

When night crept up again through the gorges, the reedy notes of the
accordion rose and fell in fitful spasms and long-drawn gasps by the
flickering campfire. But music failed to fill entirely the aching void
left by insufficient food, and a new diversion was proposed by Piney,
--story-telling. Neither Mr. Oakhurst nor his female companions caring
to relate their personal experiences, this plan would have failed too,
but for the Innocent. Some months before he had chanced upon a stray
copy of Mr. Pope's ingenious translation of the Iliad. He now proposed
to narrate the principal incidents of that poem--having thoroughly
mastered the argument and fairly forgotten the words--in the current
vernacular of Sandy Bar. And so for the rest of that night the Homeric
demigods again walked the earth. Trojan bully and wily Greek wrestled
in the winds, and the great pines in the canon seemed to bow to the
wrath of the son of Peleus. Mr. Oakhurst listened with quiet
satisfaction. Most especially was he interested in the fate of "Ash-
heels," as the Innocent persisted in denominating the "swift-footed
Achilles."

So, with small food and much of Homer and the accordion, a week passed
over the heads of the outcasts. The sun again forsook them, and again
from leaden skies the snowflakes were sifted over the land. Day by day
closer around them drew the snowy circle, until at last they looked
from their prison over drifted walls of dazzling white, that towered