Anxiously he peered into the gathering darkness, longing for the long flash of yellow light which meant Connie and the matchless Harmer.

Suddenly he stopped.  From away over the hills to his right, mingling with the call of the coyotes, came the unmistakable honk of a siren.  He held his breath to listen.  It came again, a long continued wail, in perfect tune with the whining of the coyotes.  He turned to the right and started over the hills in the wake of the call.

Over a steep incline he plunged, and paused.

“Thank God,” he cried aloud, for there he saw a little round yellow glow in the cloudy white mist,—­the Harmer Six, and Connie.

He shouted as he ran, that she might not be left in suspense a moment longer than need be.  And Connie with numbed fingers tugged the curtains loose and leaned out in the yellow mist to watch him as he came.

We talk of the mountain peaks of life.  And poets sing of the snowy crest of life crises, where we look like angels and speak like gods, where we live on the summit of ages.  This moment should have been a summit, yet when Prince ran down the hill, breathless, exultant, and nearly exhausted, Connie, her face showing peaked and white in the yellow glare, cried, “Hello, Prince, I knew you’d make it.”

She held out a half-frozen hand and he took it in his.

“Car’s busted,” she said laconically.  “Won’t budge.  I drained the water out of the radiator.”

“All right, we’ll have to hoof it,” he said cheerfully.

He relieved her of the heavier wraps, and they set out silently through the snow, Prince still holding her hand.

“I am awfully glad to see you,” she said once, in a polite little voice.

He smiled down upon her.  “I am kind o’ glad to see you, too, Connie.”

After a while she said slowly, “I need wings.  My feet are numb.”  And a moment later, “I can not walk any farther.”

“It is ten miles to a house,” he told her gravely.  “I couldn’t carry you so far.  I’ll take you a mile or so, and you will get rested.”

“I am not tired, I am cold.  And if you carry me I will be colder.  You just run along and tell Carol I am all right—­”

“Run along!  Why, you would freeze.”

“Yes, that is what I mean.”

“There is a railroad track half a mile over there.  Can you make that?”

Connie looked at him pitifully.  “I can not even lift my feet.  I am utterly stuck.  I kept stepping along,” she mumbled indistinctly, “and saying, one more,—­just one more,—­one more,—­but the foot would not come up,—­and I knew I was stuck.”

Her voice trailed away, and she bundled against him and closed her eyes.

Prince gritted his teeth and took her in his arms.  Connie was five feet seven, and very solid.  And Prince himself was nearly exhausted with the day’s exertion.  Sometimes he staggered and fell to his knees, sometimes he hardly knew if he was dragging Connie or pushing her, or if they were both blown along by the wind.  Always there was the choke in his throat, the blur in his eyes, and that almost unbearable drag in every muscle.  A freight train passed—­only a few rods away.  He thought he could never climb that bank.  “One more—­one—­more—­one more,” mumbled Connie in his ear.