It was an age till morning--until that morning of deceit.
At dawn the wind lulled.

The clouds swept by and the sun shone for an hour over a vast landscape buried under white.

Sam was ready to start, having worked half the night making runners for a sled at which his wild team snorted in the terror of unacquaintedness.

The sled box was piled full of robes and coal and food and liquor--all things that seemed needful and which could hurriedly be secured.

The breath of the horses was white steam, and ice hung on the faces of the men before they had cleared the town and swung out into the reaches of the open prairies which lay cold and empty all about them.