so very much the worse, and carrying in
her arms bundles which might have fatigued
a bronco.

The next morning she was up early, and
was as happy and ridiculously excited over
the prospect of the day's merrymaking as
if she had been Kitty. Busy as she was,
she noticed a peculiar oppression in the air,
which intensified as the day went on. The
sky seemed to hang but a little way above
the rolling stretch of frost-bitten grass. But
Kitty laughing over her new doll, Roderick
startling the sullen silence with his drum,
the smell of the chicken, slaughtered to
make a prairie holiday, browning in the
oven, drove all apprehensions from Cath-
erine's mind. She was a common creature.
Such very little things could make her happy.
She sang as she worked; and what with the
drumming of her boy, and the little exulting
shrieks of her baby, the shack was filled with
a deafening and exhilarating din.

It was a little past noon, when she became
conscious that there was sweeping down on
her a gray sheet of snow and ice, and not
till then did she realize what those lowering
clouds had signified. For one moment she
stood half paralyzed. She thought of every-