“It takes,” says she, “a storm to move you to any, speed faster than a walk.”

The darkness in the burrow was now full of light for me.  I made it soft as a mouse-nest, by pulling down the clean straw, and spreading it in the bottom, with the coonskin under her, and the buffalo-robe for a coverlid.  There was scarcely room for two there, but we made it do, and found room for the little dog also.  There was an inexpressible happiness in our safety from the awful storm, which we knew raged all about our nest; but to be together, and to feel that the things that stood between us had all been swept away at once—­even the chaff that fell down our necks only gave us cause for laughter.

“Your coat is all wet!” she exclaimed.

“It was the snow, shoveling the way in,” I said.  “It’s nothing.”

But she began right there to take care of me.  She made me take off the overcoat, and wrap myself in the blanket.  The dampness went out into the dry straw; but when drowsiness came upon us, she would not let me take the chance of getting chilled, but made me wrap myself in the robes with her; and we lay there talking until finally, tired by my labors, I went to sleep with her arms about me, and her lips close to mine; and when I awoke, she was asleep, and I lay there listening to her soft breathing for hours.

We were both hungry when she awoke, and in the total darkness we felt about for the dinner-basket, in which were the dinners of the children of the McConkey family with whom she had boarded, and who had gone home at noon, because the fuel was gone.  We ate frozen pie, and frozen boiled eggs, and frozen bread and butter; and then lay talking and caressing each other for hours.  We talked about the poor horses, for which Virginia felt a deep pity, out there in the fierce storm and the awful cold.  We talked of the beautiful cutter; and finally, I explained the way in which I had robbed Gowdy of horses and robes and sleigh, and dog.

“He can never have the dog back,” said she.  “And to think that I am hiding out in a strawstack with a robber and a horse-thief!”

Then she said she reckoned we’d have to join the Bunker gang, if we could find any of it to join.  Certainly we should be fugitives from justice when the storm was over; but she for herself would rather be a fugitive always with me than to be rescued by “that man”—­and it was lucky for him, too, she said, that I had licked him and shut him up in a house where he would be warm and fed; because he never would have been able to save himself in this awful storm as I had done.  Nobody could have done so well as I had done.  I had snatched her from the very jaws of death.

“Then,” said I, “you’re mine.”

“Of course I am,” said she.  “I’ve been yours ever since we lived together so beautifully on the road, and in our Grove of Destiny.  Of course I’m yours—­and you are mine, Teunis—­ain’t you?”

“Then,” said I, “just as soon as we get out of here, we’ll be married.”