In the night they were awakened by a terrific outburst on the mountain top, surpassing all they had yet heard since their arrival in the valley. The forest roared under the onslaughts of the wind that swept down through the gorge as through a funnel. Protected though the camp was, in a measure, fierce gusts now and then assailed it, and later the rain came, almost in torrents, beating through the canopy of foliage, and half-flooding the bed.
Marion, rising to renew the fire, felt that a sharp change had come in the atmosphere. It was colder than any night they had yet endured. Wrapped again in her blankets, she was unable to keep warm. Her feet, near the fire, were too hot, while her back and shoulders ached as if they had been packed in ice. Turn which way she would, on her back, on her side, or face downward, there was no relief from that acid cold. She did not complain, but cried softly, trying to hold back her sobs so that he should not hear her.
"You're cold," he said, hearing her nevertheless.
"A little--not very," she answered bravely.
But he knew very well how keenly she was suffering. His injured leg pained him almost beyond endurance, as if the frost had been concentrated there. There was nothing he could say or do for her or for himself.
Toward morning, the fury of the storm having abated, they slept a little, fitfully and uneasily, in the half-insensibility to suffering that complete exhaustion brings. But they were glad when the first gray light of morning stole in among the shadows and touched their eyelids. With one accord, as if in a common apprehension, and moved by a single fear, they raised their heads, and at the first glance about them, sat up staring.
The meadow lay white under its first coverlet of snow, the trees were draped in their winter mantles, their very bed had its downy quilt of snowflakes that had sifted through the branches of the tree.
"Yes," she answered, in a voice that echoed a tragic calm.
"Seth kept saying we'd have a hard and early winter."
"Huntington's not such a fool as he looks," retorted Haig drily, as he lay back to look up resignedly into the foliage, where white now mingled with the green.
For some time there was no more speech. Marion arose, and went silently about her work. She heaped wood on the fire until the flames leaped high, and the heat began to drive out the settled chill from her limbs, and she could move again without dull pain. Then to the brook; but her baths in the pool were ended. She washed face and hands, and brought back the wet towel for Philip. And breakfast was eaten almost in silence, and without appetite; for the good venison that had so rejoiced them the night before had already lost its flavor.