The weather, however, moderated a little by and bye, and one afternoon soon after it did so Mrs. Hastings drove off to Lander's with the one hired man they kept through the winter. Her husband, who insisted upon her taking him, had set out earlier for the bluff, and as the Scandinavian maid had recently been married, Agatha was left in the house with the little girls.
It was bitterly cold, even inside the dwelling, but Agatha was busy baking, and she failed to notice that the frost had once more become almost Arctic, until she stood beside a window as evening was closing in. A low, dingy sky hung over the narrowing sweep of prairie which stretched back, gleaming lividly, into the creeping dusk, but a few minutes later a haze of snow whirled across it and cut the dreary scene in half. Then the light died out suddenly, and she and the little girls drew their chairs close up to the stove. The house was very quiet, but she could hear the mournful wailing of the wind about it, and now and then the soft swish of driven snow upon the walls and roofing shingles.
The table was laid for supper, and a kettle was singing cheerfully upon the stove, but there was no sign of the others, and by and bye Agatha commenced to feel a little anxious. Mrs. Hastings, she fancied, would stay the night at Lander's if there was any unfavourable change in the weather, which seemed to be the case, but she wondered what could be detaining Hastings. It was not very far to the bluff, and as he could not have continued chopping in the darkness it seemed to her that he should have reached the homestead already.
He did not come, however, and she grew more uneasy as the time slipped by, while the wail of the wind grew louder and the stove crackled more noisily, until at last one of the little girls rose with a cry, and she fancied she heard a dull beat of hoofs. It grew plainer until she was sure of it, but soon after that the sound ceased abruptly, and she could not hear the rattle of flung down logs which she had expected. This struck her as curious, since she knew that Hastings generally unloaded the sled before he led the team to the stable. She waited a moment or two, but except for the doleful wind nothing broke the silence now, and when it became oppressive she moved towards the door.