This was the manner of its coming. Before it, there was clear sky, and the sun shining upon new-fallen snow, a soft breeze from the west, moist and not cold. Then to the north was a line of high-banked, slate-gray cloud, and the mutter of thunder. Next, suddenly, the clouds darkened sun and sky, the north wind struck frigidly, and the air was thick with furious snow.

All day Friday the line of that front had swept southward across Alberta and Saskatchewan. At noon it engulfed Edmonton; just before the winter sunset, Saskatoon and Calgary. In the open, life lost all semblance of pleasure or dignity or even of safety. From the Rockies to Lake Winnipeg animals and men alike sought shelter. The blizzard held sway.

About midnight the front approached the international boundary just north of Havre, Montana. No immigration officers demanded passports; no customs officials searched for contraband. Although the Weather Bureau had given warning, not even a hastily mobilized regiment of the National Guard held the border. At the very least, the Department of State might have sent a sharp note to Ottawa, warning that the Dominion Government would be held strictly accountable for damage done by the Canadian air. Reasonable expectation could only be that a hundred or more citizens of the United States would lose their lives in the cold wave, and that wreckage of property would reach millions. Indirectly, through pneumonia and other means, the loss of life would run into many hundreds and the sum of such items as increased consumption of fuel, snow-removal, and delays in transportation would total an appalling figure. Yet the United States of America (often called by its citizens the greatest nation of the earth) merely cowered before the Canadian invasion.

The northern air crossed the border just after midnight on Saturday morning; by daybreak it had occupied much of Montana and North Dakota, and was advancing upon Minnesota, South Dakota and Wyoming.

3

Beyond the window-panes was again the blank darkness of the winter morning. From the teletype-room seemed to come, minute by minute, a wilder confusion of staccato clicks and ringing bells.

Working on the chart, the J. M. felt his throat grow tight with excitement. Maria was driving in hard. He had no need to wait for the Chief’s isobars. Along the southwesterly sea-lane, from San Francisco to Honolulu, the usual string of ships reported. This morning these ships close to either end had fair weather, but those near the middle had rain, and wind running up to forty-mile gales. That could only mean that the edge of the near-by circular storm moving in from the west had cut right across the ship-lane. He could even locate exactly Maria’s single remaining front, for by luck two ships had reported from within a few miles of each other; one had had a northwest, the other a southwest wind, sure sign that the advancing front lay right between.