She was perfectly happy. In each of them the good, red blood of youth
ran full and strong, offering ample security against illness. They had
plenty of food. In a few brief months Bill would wrest a sack of gold
from the treasure house of the North, and they would journey home by
easy stages. Why should she brood? It was sheer folly--a mere ebb of
spirit.
Fortune favored them to the extent of letting the October storms remain
in abeyance until Bill finished his cabin, with a cavernous fireplace
of rough stone at one end. He split planks for a door out of raw
timber, and graced his house with two windows--one of four small panes
of glass carefully packed in their bedding all the way from Hazleton,
the other a two-foot square of deerskin scraped parchment thin; opaque
to the vision, it still permitted light to enter. The floor was plain
earth, a condition Bill promised to remedy with hides of moose, once
his buildings were completed. Rudely finished, and lacking much that
would have made for comfort, still it served its purpose, and Hazel
made shift contentedly.
Followed then the erection of a stable to shelter the horses. Midway
of its construction a cloud bank blew out of the northeast, and a foot
of snow fell.
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