At last, after what seemed to me hours of scrambling through the snow, through deepest gloom where pines were thickest, and out again into patches of white moonlight, we reached the ugly clearing where the new camp stood.  Gavotte escorted us to the door and then returned to our camp.  Entering, we saw the poor, little soon-to-be mother huddled on her poor bed, while an older woman stood near warning her that the oil would soon be all gone and they would be in darkness.  She told us that the sick one had been in pain all the day before and much of the night, and that she herself was worn completely out.  So Mrs. O’Shaughnessy sent her to bed and we took charge.

Secretly, I felt it all to be a big nuisance to be dragged out from my warm, comfortable bed to traipse through the snow at that time of the night.  But the moment poor little Molly spoke I was glad I was living, because she was a poor little Southern girl whose husband is a Mormon.  He had been sent on a mission to Alabama, and the poor girl had fallen in love with his handsome face and knew nothing of Mormonism, so she had run away with him.  She thought it would be so grand to live in the glorious West with so splendid a man as she believed her husband to be.  But now she believed she was going to die and she was glad of it because she could not return to her “folks,” and she said she knew her husband was dead because he and the other woman’s husband, both of whom had intended to stay there all winter and cut logs, had gone two weeks before to get their summer’s wages and buy supplies.  Neither man had come back and there was not a horse or any other way to get out of the mountains to hunt them, so they believed the men to be frozen somewhere on the road.  Rather a dismal prospect, wasn’t it?  Molly was just longing for some little familiar thing, so I was glad I have not yet gotten rid of my Southern way of talking.  No Westerner can ever understand a Southerner’s need of sympathy, and, however kind their hearts, they are unable to give it.  Only a Southerner can understand how dear are our peculiar words and phrases, and poor little Molly took new courage when she found I knew what she meant when she said she was just “honin’” after a friendly voice.

Well, soon we had the water hot and had filled some bottles and placed them around our patient, and after a couple of hours the tiny little stranger came into the world.  It had been necessary to have a great fire in order to have light, so as soon as we got Baby dressed I opened the door a little to cool the room and Molly saw the morning star twinkling merrily.  “Oh,” she said, “that is what I will call my little girlie,—­Star, dear little Star.”

It is strange, isn’t it? how our spirits will revive after some great ordeal.  Molly had been sure she was going to die and saw nothing to live for; now that she had had a cup of hot milk and held her red little baby close, she was just as happy and hopeful as if she had never left her best friends and home to follow the uncertain fortunes of young Will Crosby.  So she and I talked of ash-hoppers, smoke-houses, cotton-patches, goobers, poke-greens, and shoats, until she fell asleep.