All night King kept his fire blazing. With several long sticks and a piece of the canvas, drawing deeply upon his ingenuity and almost to the dregs of his patience, he contrived a rude barrier to the cold across the mouth of the cave. Countless times he rolled out of his own bunk, heavy-eyed and stiff, to readjust the screen when it had blown down, to put more wood on his fire, to make sure that Gloria was covered and warm, sleeping heavily, and not dead.

His nerves were frayed. In the long night his fears grew, misshapen and grotesque. Within his soul he prayed mutely that when morning came Gloria would be alive. When with the first sickly streaks of dawn he went to put fresh fuel upon the dying embers he found that there was but a handful of wood left. He came to stoop over the girl and listen to her breathing. Then he descended the cliffs for more wood.

During the night winter had set the white seal of his sovereignty upon the world. The snarling wind had died in its own fierceness, giving over to a still, calm air, through which steadily the big flakes fell. Now they clung to bush and tree everywhere; the limbs had grown thick and heavy, drooping like countless plumes. Fat mats of snow lay on the level spaces, upon flat rocks, curling over and down at the edges.