“That would be good.”

We watched the snow for a while.

“I have read,” I said, “that of all the trillions and trillions of snowflakes, no two are alike.”

“Aw,” Tim said. “They’re just flakes, aren’t they?”

“Under the microscope they have very complicated designs.”

“How would you put a snowflake under a microscope?” he scoffed. “It’d melt.”

“Maybe they keep the microscope in an ice box,” I said. “Or they might take it outside.”

He scooped up some snow and looked at it. It melted in his hand. “Snow is just frozen water,” he said, “and it’s all the same.”

The snow came down all day and on into the night. We had to get up during the afternoon and start a fire and shove some of the snow back from the entrance to our shelter. I packed the pot with snow and melted it down. It was amazing how a whole pot of snow became only an inch or so of water. When I had melted enough, I put in some of the turkey and the frozen, leftover beans. Meanwhile Tim plunged through the drifts and came back with enough spruce needles for tea, which we started in the other pot.

“I don’t even like regular tea,” he grumbled. But I noticed that he drank his share when it was ready. We had to use the same tin cup as it was the only one left.

We had both lost weight by then, I’m sure, but I do not think it was an unhealthy loss. Aside from my injury, we were vigorous and hearty. We had been prone to minor stomach cramps, probably from the high proportion of wild meat in our diet. And we both suffered from constipation. Other than that, we fared better in those northern forests living off the land than I have heard the children of our city slums do, living in their own homes.

The snow continued. We lazed away the rest of the second day and evening. It was late that night that I noticed that the steady rustle of the snowfall had stopped. I got up and put more wood on the fire. As it blazed up, I happened to look out into the night.

I screamed. Tim leaped up and hurried out.

“What is it?” he said.

I pointed, but there was nothing.

“What did you see?”

“Two red eyes looking at me.”

“Oh, is that all?”

“They were horrible.”

“It was probably just a deer. The fire shines off their eyes, just like the reflectors on the back of the Model T. Have you ever noticed?”

I could not honestly say that I had. It was enough to give a person a fright, I can tell you. I went back to bed trembling. When I fell asleep it was to dream of being chased by an old automobile with blazing red eyes for headlights.