“Come back, you,” Christine was at Abbie’s side.

“No, Christine, I must get home.” She had to say it close to Christine’s ear in the roaring of the storm.

Christine ran her arm through Abbie’s, “With you I go.” Abbie made a single feeble protest and then clung to Christine.

In the welter of snow they reached the far side of the road opposite the Reinmuellers’, and Christine with her left arm hooked through Abbie’s, ran her right hand along the top of the wire fence for guidance. The wind lashed them until they cowered from it. The snow, in great swirling masses, drove its stinging clods into their eyes and nostrils. Irregular drifts formed at their feet in a moment’s time. When there came one terrific blast of wind more infuriated than others, Christine clung harder to the wire, the ugly barbs digging the flesh until the blood came. And then the composition of the snow seemed to change. It was no longer even slightly pliable, but a cruel, hard, dry substance which cut at them like bullets and nails and knives.

Abbie’s strength in her present physical condition was going. She stopped and moaned at the necessity of pushing her cumbersome self into the jaws of the storm. Christine, with her more wiry robustness, half dragged the lagging body.

Suddenly, the barbedwire gave place to picket and Christine knew that the Deals’ yard-fence was reached.

“Now, not so far,” she shouted into Abbie’s ear. They wallowed, slackened, stopped altogether, crouched before the fury, and then gathered themselves together and plunged on again. Abbie, with her waning strength, had ceased to think, except to obey Christine.

And then the pickets ended abruptly in a post, with space beyond, and Christine realized that it was the open lane-gate and that she had unknowingly passed the small front gate.

“Vait,” she shouted. But she had no reason to encourage Abbie in waiting. For Abbie had sunk into the icy bed of a huge drift with the pangs of childbirth upon her.

CHAPTER XX

And now Christine had to pull Abbie out of the drift and put forth all her effort to get the suffering woman to retrace her steps to the little front gate. She did not dare turn into the wide open gateway and run the risk of losing her bearings in the uncharted wilderness of the lane road.

In the added fear of her childbirth warnings, Abbie clung to Christine with all her strength. “Oh, . . . Christine . . . I can’t go any farther . . .” The storm god took the words and threw them back into her face.

“Come . . . you!” Christine hurled savagely into Abbie’s ear. “Of your man t’ink. Of your kinder t’ink. You’re verrückt . . . crazy!”

Christine kept her freezing right arm through Abbie’s, and plunging slowly ahead, grasped every picket with her left. Pausing, cowering, plunging, pulling Abbie’s half-prostrate body, she came to the welcome cross-pieces of the small gate. “By de cedars ve tell,” she called in Abbie’s ear. They turned blindly, for all directions seemed lost in the mad whirl of snow, crawled through the gateway, and grasped the first cedar. “How many?” Christine was calling.