"Many times before."

"No, only once. The other times were when we were children. They don't count."

"Do things that happened when we were children not count--with you?"

"Do they--with you?"

"Ask me, and see."

It had come; the moment of which I had told myself in dreams and visions; the moment to which I had looked forward with a strange fear and a great hope. "Jean," I whispered. "I love you. Will you be my wife?"

As I write the words they seem very bare and matter-of-fact. But they were all that Jean required. She made no spoken answer, but she turned her face to mine, and I drew her up in my strong arms and kissed her in the breathless pa.s.sion of our young love. . . . .

After a time, with one box serving us both, we talked of our future. I hinted that circ.u.mstances made our immediate marriage somewhat dependent upon the course that Jack and Marjorie might elect to follow. I took it for granted that Jack and Marjorie would marry, but I was very vague in my idea as to when this would happen.

"I don't think we shall have to wait on Jack and Marjorie," Jean remarked, knowingly. "I rather think they have been waiting on us."

"Then they need wait no longer," I said, boldly. "I am ready at once; now."

"We might make it by Christmas," Jean remarked, more thoughtfully. "We can't afford any special wedding clothes but we can at least afford a few weeks' antic.i.p.ation."

"Then Christmas be it!" I exclaimed. "Oh, Merry Christmas!"

I was so stirred with a strange new joy that all the future looked rosy and inviting. But suddenly I felt Jean's arm tighten on my neck and I looked up in her face just in time to catch the splash of a warm tear on my cheek. I was immediately filled with wonder and misgiving. What could make Jean cry, in a moment of such happiness? I pressed the question.

"I'm not sorry," she said at length, "but I'm a little--frightened. Not for you; for myself. Oh, my dear Frank, my dear boy--will you always--will we always--love each other as we do to-night?"

Man-like, I a.s.sured her that of course we would. She rested her head against mine, and for awhile she seemed to nestle at peace in the soft luxury of our love. But presently a shiver ran through her frame, and, drawing back a little, she looked me fairly in the eyes.

"You know, Frank," she murmured, "it seems strange to say it, but I am so glad to get this settled."

"Not gladder than I, little one," said I, shaping my lips to endearments with the awkwardness of my racial reticence. "You couldn't be gladder than I am."

"I have wanted so long," she continued, almost disregarding my interruption, "to get it settled--to be sure of myself--to know just what is going to happen."

"To be sure of yourself? How sure of yourself?"

She dropped into a moment's silence, as though studying her words before attempting an answer. "You won't misunderstand, I think, Frank," she said at length, "if I tell you that I have been somewhat like a traveller on the prairie who comes upon two roads, and is not quite sure which he should take. Let us say a storm is sweeping down from the North, and his very life depends on the right decision. But the longer he stands there, looking at them, the harder it is to make the choice.

It's a comfort to choose, and be on one's way."

"But suppose he chooses the wrong way?" I blundered out, only half following her meaning.

"Oh, Frank!" she cried seizing my shoulders in her strong, supple hands.

"It mustn't, mustn't, _mustn't_ be the wrong way! I won't have it the wrong way--I won't think of _that_ as possible! See, here we are. And we have known, always, since we were little children, that we were for each other, haven't we, Frank? It has always been settled, in Heaven, don't you think, and we have just confirmed it? Oh, I know it has--I know it has!"

"I have never doubted it," I said. And even as I uttered the words the first little poisoned arrow of doubt in some way dodged through my armor and stung me in the heart. Perhaps it was the reaction to Jean's vehemence; perhaps it was that I saw her striving over-hard to convince herself. And from being over-sure I now craved to be a.s.sured.

"You are quite sure?" I ventured, after another silence in which I felt that subtle poison slowly chilling through my veins. "You are quite sure you should not have taken the road to section Two?"

"Oh, Frank!" For a moment she buried her face in my shoulder, then she lifted her head proudly, like one who goes forth resolutely to try his spirit in some great issue. "Yes, I'm sure! Spoof is to me only a neighbour, an acquaintance, always. I am quite sure."

"And there was no third trail, no little-beaten third path, that might have been the one to be chosen?" I persisted, anxious to stifle my demon of doubt at its birth.

"You are thinking of Brook," she caught me up instantly. "Let that give you no uneasiness. Brook was only an incident--a rather pleasant incident," she added, and for the first time I realized how exquisitely tantalizing Jean could be, "but an incident after all.

Let's not talk about it, or think about it, any more, at all. Everything is settled."

So, by force of will, we turned our minds into happy, unquestioning channels, and talked of the future, our future--and built fairy dream-castles that were most wonderful things to dream about. From time to time Jean arose from my knee to throw fresh wood on the fire, but she needed no coaxing to return. Some strange phenomenon had already occurred between us, and Jean, with all her gentleness and beauty and delicacy, no longer walled herself about with quite the same barrier of shyness as had been her custom. But her soul, I knew, was as pure as the snow sifting across the white prairies outside.

At last we had to come back to earth. "It's growing colder," said Jean, as she again replenished the fire. Then, glancing at the little clock on the shelf, "Why, it's after midnight! Jack is late."

"Are you uneasy for him?"

"No--why should I? Jack is all right. And I have you. But I thought he would have been back before this. . . . Listen!"

We strained our ears, and presently became aware that what had seemed to be the silence of the night was really full of noises. The wind whined with an eerie note about the eaves of the little shack, and the tremor of its pressure ran through the board walls and wrung mournful creakings from the slender framework of the building. Above all came a sound of rushing, as though the night itself swept by, drumming on the tin chimney-piece as it went. The incessant lash of snow against the black panes of the windows gave further notice of the rising storm.

"Perhaps I had better go home," I said at length. "Jack is doubtless waiting there until I turn up."

"You have the same privilege to wait here until he turns up," Jean commented. "Still, I suppose it's the right thing to do."

So, reluctantly enough, I got into my pea-jacket, cap, and over-shoes, and with Jean's good-night kiss on my lips, and a promise to come again very soon, I opened the door. The moment I did so the suction of the storm put out the light, and the next instant a flail of icy snow particles lashed through the room. I pressed the door shut again while Jean found matches.

"Such a night!" she exclaimed. "Is it quite safe to try it?"

"Of course! It's not a hundred yards, and I could make it with my eyes shut."

So, with another farewell (for good measure) I started again, Jean shading the lamp while I rushed through the door and closed it behind me. My first sensation was of having been clutched by the neck; of being strangled in a grip which I could not throw off. In a few moments the worst of that sensation pa.s.sed, and my lungs began pumping violently, working against the partial vacuum created by the storm. It was not very cold, but the snow stung the face where it struck; it clung in the eyebrows, melted, and ran into the eyes, blurring such poor vision as there was in the gaunt greyness that buffeted from every side.

I looked for the light of the shack on Fourteen, but it was nowhere to be seen; evidently its faint rays could not beat their way through the hundred yards of swirling tempest that intervened. So, taking careful note of my directions, I started out, my head bowed to save my face from the lashing of the storm; my legs wallowing uncertainly through the varying depths of drifts.

At length I knew I had come to the edge of the gully; although I could see nothing I was aware that I was going sharply down a steep slope.

Here at points the snow was already piled in great drifts and I plunged through it waist deep, only to come suddenly upon a bare, icy spot where I lost my balance and fell. I was now at the bottom of the coulee, and the ascent proved even more difficult than coming down. I had to plow through deep drifts and scramble up icy ledges, and I could only suppose that I had reached the top by the greater violence of the storm. Nothing was to be seen but a grey mist; my eyes were almost completely closed with snow and ice. I was not cold; indeed, I was warm, but I began to realize that my exertions and the strangling sensation I felt in breathing were quickly exhausting me. However, there could not be much farther to go, and I pressed on.

It is wonderful how little sense of distance the average man has when deprived of the service of his eyes. He may walk a road every day in the year and yet have but a faint idea of the number of paces it represents.

He probably could not tell you how many steps there are in the stairs of his house. As to direction he is even more hopelessly at sea, and when, in addition to these difficulties, he is plunging waist-deep through snow drifts and buffeted by a fifty-mile gale he is in imminent danger of becoming hopelessly lost. Just how near to that state I had come I began to realize, and it was with more relief than I would have cared to admit that I at length discerned a faint glow of yellow light battling against the storm and throwing fantastic spectres into the night. I was soon at the shack, and, groping my way along the wall, I reached the door and burst in.

Jean was sitting by the stove, her wonderful hair down about her back and neck, her face resting in her hands, her feet on the rail of the stove and her dainty ankles peeping out from under her woolen skirt. But for the moment my appreciation of her charms was buried in amazement.

"Jean! What are you doing here?"

"Frank! You've come back! What is the matter?"

I threw off my mitts and rubbed the snow from my eyes while Jean took my cap and shook it and then stood by, eagerness and apprehension in her face. Then, when I was quite sure I was not in a dream or a mirage, "I guess I'm back on Twenty-two, am I?" I said, as one who, suddenly awakened from sleep, finds it impossible to recall his surroundings.

"You're on Twenty-two all right, but why did you come back? Not that I'm not glad to see you--you know I am, Frank, dear, always--but, why did you come back?"

"I guess it's because my time hasn't come," I answered, soberly. "I've heard of getting turned around in a storm, but I didn't know it could happen so easily. I suppose it was when I fell at the bottom of the gully."