To turn back would have given them only the advantage of going with, instead of against, the gathering gale. Both were eager to get to work again: Nelson had undertaken to dig wells for two of the older settlers in the bush country; and he intended to clear a piece of his own land during the winter and to sell the wood which he had accumulated the year before.

They came to a fork in the trail and struck north-east. Soon after the turn Nelson stopped.

“Remember the last house?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Niels, speaking Swedish.

“From there on, for twenty miles north and for ten miles east the land is open for homestead entry. But it is no good. Mere sand that blows with the wind as soon as the brush is taken off.”

They plodded on for another hour. The trail was crossed and criss-crossed by cattle paths. Which they were on, trail or cattle path, was hard to tell.

Once more Nelson stopped. “Where’s north?”

Niels pointed.

But Nelson did not agree. “If the wind hasn’t changed, north must be there,” he said pointing over his shoulder.

The snow was coming down in ever denser waves which a relentless wind threw sideways into their faces. The ground was covered now.

“Cold?” asked Nelson.

“Not very,” Niels answered deprecatingly.

“We’re over half,” Nelson said. “No use turning back. If we keep north, we must hit Grassy Creek, road or no road.”

They plodded on. That they were not on the trail there could be no doubt any longer; they felt the low brush impeding their steps.

Sometimes they stumbled; Niels laughed apologetically; Nelson swore under his breath. But they kept their sides to the wind and went on.

Both would have liked to talk, to tell and to listen to stories of danger, of being lost, of hair-breadth escapes: the influence of the prairie snowstorm made itself felt. But whenever one of them spoke, the wind snatched his word from his lips and threw it aloft.

A merciless force was slowly numbing them by ceaseless pounding. A vision of some small room, hot with the glow and flicker of an open fire, took possession of Niels. But blindly, automatically he kept up with his companion.

Suddenly they came to larger bush. Not that they saw it; but they heard the soughing of the wind through its aisles and its leafless boughs; and they felt the unexpected shelter.

They stopped.

“Danged if I know where we are,” said Nelson in English; and he began to beat the air with the stick which he had cut for himself, going forward towards whatever gave the shelter.

The stick cracked against something hard.

“Well,” Nelson exclaimed, again in English, “I’ll be doggoned!” He had stepped forward and put his hand against the wall of a building. “We’ve hit something here.”

Niels kept close.

At the top of his voice Nelson shouted, “Hi there! Anybody in?” And again he beat against the wall.

They edged and groped along and came to a tiny window which was just then illumined by the flicker of a match.

“Hello!” Nelson sang out in his booming voice. “Open up, will you?”

And, having felt his way a little farther along the building, he came to a door which he recognised as such when his hand struck the knob. He rattled it and hammered the jamb with his fist.

They were on the south side of the house, sheltered from the wind which whistled through trees that stood very near.

A light shone forth from the window. Whoever was inside had lighted a lamp. Nelson redoubled his shouts and knocks. They waited.

At last, after a seemingly endless interval, a bolt was withdrawn, and the door opened the least little bit.

Impetuously Nelson pushed it open altogether.

In its frame stood an old man of perhaps sixty-five, bent over, grey, with short, straggling hair and beard and hollow eyes, one of which was squinting. He held a shotgun in his hands, with one finger on the trigger.

“What you want?” he asked in the tone of distrust.

“Let’s in,” sang Nelson. “We’re lost. Caught in the storm.”

“No can,” the old man replied with forbidding hostility. “Get on.” His threatening gesture was unmistakable.

“You Swedish?” asked Nelson in his native tongue.

The old man hesitated as if taken off his guard by the personal question. “Naw,” he said at last, still in English. “Icelandic.