The Long Blizzard
A storm was dying down at supper-time one day, and Pa said: “Tomorrow I’m going to town. I need some tobacco for my pipe and I want to hear the news. Do you need anything, Caroline?”
“No, Charles,” said Ma. “Don’t go. These blizzards come up so fast.” “There’ll be no danger tomorrow,” said Pa. “We’ve just had a three-days’ blizzard. There’s plenty of wood chopped to last through the next one, and I can take time to go to town now.”
“Well, if you think best,” Ma said. “At least, Charles, promise me that you will stay in town if a storm comes up.”
“I wouldn’t try to stir a step without safe hold on a rope, in one of these storms,” said Pa. “But it is not like you, Caroline, to be afraid to have me go anywhere.”
“I can’t help it,” Ma answered. “I don’t feel right about your going. I have a feeling—it’s just foolishness, I guess.”
Pa laughed. “I’ll bring in the woodpile, just in case I do have to stay in town.”
He filled the woodbox and piled wood high around it. Ma urged him to put on an extra pair of socks, to keep his feet from being frost-bitten. So Laura brought the bootjack and Pa pulled off his boots and drew another pair of socks over those he already wore. Ma gave him a new pair which she had just finished knitting of thick, warm wool.
“I do wish you had a buffalo overcoat,” said Ma. “That old coat is worn so thin.”
“And I wish you had some diamonds,” said Pa. “Don’t you worry, Caroline. It won’t be long till spring.”
Pa smiled at them while he buckled the belt of his old, threadbare overcoat and put on his warm felt cap.
“That wind is so bitter cold, Charles,” Ma worried. “Do pull down the earlaps.”
“Not this morning!” said Pa. “Let the wind whistle! Now you girls be good, all of you, till I come back.” And his eyes twinkled at Laura as he shut the door behind him.
After Laura and Mary had washed and wiped the dishes, swept the floor, made their bed, and dusted, they settled down with their books. But the house was so cosy and pretty that Laura kept looking up at it.
The black stove was polished till it gleamed. A kettle of beans was bubbling on its top and bread was baking in the oven. Sunshine slanted through the shining windows between the pink-edged curtains. The red-checked cloth was on the table. Beside the clock on its shelf stood Carrie’s little brown-and-white dog, and Laura’s sweet jewel-box. And the little pink-and-white shepherdess stood smiling on the wood-brown bracket.
Ma had brought her mending-basket to her rocking-chair by the window, and Carrie sat on the footstool by her knee. While Ma rocked and mended, she heard Carrie say her letters in the primer. Carrie told big A and little a, big B and little b, then she laughed and talked and looked at the pictures. She was still so little that she did not have to keep quiet and study.
The clock struck twelve. Laura watched its pendulum wagging, and the black hands moving on the round white face. It was time for Pa to come home. The beans were cooked, the bread was baked. Everything was ready for Pa’s dinner.
Laura’s eyes strayed to the window. She stared a moment before she knew that something was wrong with the sunshine.
“Ma!” she cried, “the sun is a funny color.”
Ma looked up from her mending, startled. She went quickly into the bedroom, where she could see the north-west, and she came quietly back.
“You may put away your books, girls,” she said. “Bundle up and bring in more wood. If Pa hasn’t started home he will stay in town and we will need more wood in the house.”
From the woodpile Laura and Mary saw the dark cloud coming. They hurried, they ran, but there was time only to get into the house with their armloads of wood before the storm came howling. It seemed angry that they had got the two loads of wood. Snow whirled so thickly that they could not see the doorstep, and Ma said:
“That will do for now. The storm can’t get much worse, and Pa may come in a few minutes.”
Mary and Laura took off their wraps and warmed their cold-stiff hands. Then they waited for Pa.
The wind shrieked and howled and jeered around the house. Snow swished against the blank windows. The long black hand of the clock moved slowly around its face, the short hand moved to one, and then to two.
Ma dished up three bowls of the hot beans. She broke into pieces a small loaf of the fresh warm bread.
“Here, girls,” she said. “You might as well eat your dinner. Pa must have stayed in town.” She had forgotten to fill a bowl for herself.
Then she forgot to eat until Mary reminded her. Even then she did not really eat; she said she was not hungry.
The storm was growing worse. The house trembled in the wind. Cold crept over the floor, and powdery snow was driven in around the windows and the doors that Pa had made so tight.
“Pa has surely stayed in town,” Ma said. “He will stay there all night, and I’d better do the chores now.”
She drew on Pa’s old, tall stable-boots. Her little feet were lost in them, but they would keep out the snow. She fastened Pa’s jumper snug at her throat and belted it around her waist. She tied her hood and put on her mittens.
“May I go with you, Ma?” Laura asked.
“No,” said Ma. “Now listen to me. Be careful of fire. Nobody but Mary is to touch the stove, no matter how long I am gone. Nobody is to go outdoors, or even open a door, till I come back.”
She hung the milk-pail on her arm, and reached through the whirling snow till she got hold of the clothes-line. She shut the back door behind her.
Laura ran to the darkened window, but she could not see Ma. She could see nothing but the whirling whiteness swishing against the glass. The wind screamed and howled and gibbered. There seemed to be voices in it. Ma would go step by step, holding tight to the clothes-line. She would come to the post and go on, blind in the hard snow whirling and scratching her cheeks. Laura tried to think slowly, one step at a time, till now, surely, Ma bumped against the stable door.
Ma opened the door and blew in with the snow. She turned and pushed the door shut quickly, and dropped the latch into its notch. The stable would be warm from the heat of the animals, and steamy with their breath. It was quiet there; the storm was outside, and the sod walls were thick. Now Sam and David turned their heads and whickered to Ma. The cow coaxed, “Moo-oo,” and the big calf cried, “Baw!” The pullets were scratching here and there, and one of the hens was saying to herself, “Crai-ai-kree-eek.”
Ma would clean all the stalls with the pitchfork. Forkful by forkful she threw the old bedding on the manure-pile. Then she took the hay they had left in their mangers, and spread it to make them clean beds.
From the hay-pile she pitched fresh hay into manger after manger, till all four mangers were full. Sam and David and Spot and her calf munched the rustling good hay. They were not very thirsty, because Pa had watered them all before he went to town.
With the old knife that Pa kept by the turnip-pile Ma cut up turnips. She put some in each feed-box, and now the horses and cattle crunched the crisp turnips. Ma looked at the hens’ water-dish to make sure they had water. She scattered a little corn for them, and gave them a turnip to peck.
Now she must be milking Spot.
Laura waited until she was sure that Ma was hanging up the milking-stool. Carefully fastening the stable door behind her, Ma came back toward the house, holding tight to the rope.
But she did not come. Laura waited a long time. She made up her mind to wait longer, and she did. The wind was shaking the house now. Snow as fine and grainy as sugar covered the window sill and sifted off to the floor and did not melt.
Laura shivered in her shawl. She kept on staring at the blank window-panes, hearing the swishing snow and the howling, jeering winds. She was thinking of the children whose Pa and Ma never came. They burned all the furniture and froze stark stiff.
Then Laura could be still no longer. The fire was burning well, but only that end of the room was really warm. Laura pulled the rocking-chair near the open oven and set Carrie in it and straightened her dress. Carrie rocked the chair gaily, while Laura and Mary went on waiting.
At last the back door burst open. Laura flew to Ma. Mary took the milk-pail while Laura untied Ma’s hood. Ma was too cold and breathless to speak. They helped her out of the jumper.
The first thing she said was, “Is there any milk left?”
There was a little milk in the bottom of the pail, and some was frozen to the pail’s inside. “The wind is terrible,” Ma said. She warmed her hands, and then she lighted the lamp and set it on the window sill.
“Why are you doing that, Ma?” Mary asked her, and Ma said, “Don’t you think the lamplight’s pretty, shining against the snow outside?”
When she was rested, they ate their supper of bread and milk. Then they all sat still by the stove and listened. They heard the voices howling and shrieking in the wind, and the house creaking, and the snow swishing.
“This will never do!” said Ma. “Let’s play bean-porridge hot! Mary, you and Laura play it together, and, Carrie, you hold up your hands. We’ll do it faster than Mary and Laura can!
So they all played bean-porridge hot, faster and faster until they could not say the rhymes, for laughing. Then Mary and Laura washed the supper cups, while Ma settled down to her knitting.
Carrie wanted more bean-porridge hot, so Mary and Laura took turns playing it with her. Every time they stopped she shouted, “More! More!”
The voices in the storm howled and giggled and shrieked, and the house trembled. Laura was patting on Carrie’s hands,
“Some like it hot, some like it cold,
Some like it in the pot, nine days—”
The stovepipe sharply rattled. Laura looked up and screamed, “Ma! The house is on fire!”
A ball of fire was rolling down the stovepipe. It was bigger than Ma’s big ball of yarn. It rolled across the stove and dropped to the floor as Ma sprang up. She snatched up her skirts and stamped on it. But it seemed to jump through her foot, and it rolled to the knitting she had dropped.
Ma tried to brush it into the ashpan. It ran in front of her knitting needles, but it followed the needles back. Another ball of fire had rolled down the stovepipe, and another. They rolled across the floor after the knitting needles and did not burn the floor.
“My goodness!” Ma said.
While they watched those balls of fire rolling, suddenly there were only two. Then there were none. No one had seen where they went.
“That is the strangest thing I ever saw,” said Ma. She was afraid.
All the hair on Jack’s back was standing up. He walked to the door, lifted up his nose, and howled.
Mary cowered in her chair and Ma put her hands over her ears. “For pity’s sake, Jack, hush,” she begged him.
Laura ran to Jack, but he did not want to be hugged. He went back to his corner and lay with his nose on his paws, his hair bristling and his eyes shining in the shadow.
Ma held Carrie, and Laura and Mary crowded into the rocking-chair, too. They heard the wild voices of the storm and felt Jack’s eyes shining, till Ma said:
“Better run along to bed, girls. The sooner you’re asleep, the sooner it will be morning.” She kissed them good-night, and Mary climbed the attic ladder. But Laura stopped halfway up. Ma was warming Carrie’s nightgown by the oven. Laura asked her, low, “Pa did stay in town, didn’t he?”
Ma did not look up. She said cheerfully, “Why, surely, Laura. No doubt he and Mr. Fitch are sitting by the stove now, telling stories and cracking jokes.”
Laura went to bed. Deep in the night she woke and saw lamplight shining up through the ladder-hole. She crept out of bed into the cold, and kneeling on the floor she looked down.
Ma sat alone in her chair. Her head was bowed and she was very still, but her eyes were open, looking at her hands clasped in her lap. The lamp was shining in the window.
For a long time Laura looked down. Ma did not move. The lamp went on shining. The storm howled and hooted after things that fled shrieking through the enormous dark around the frightened house. At last Laura crept silently back to bed and lay shivering.

The Day of Games
It was late next morning when Ma called Laura to breakfast. The storm was fiercer and wilder. Furry-white frost covered the windows, and inside that good tight house the sugary snow was over the floor and the bedcovers. Upstairs was so cold that Laura snatched up her clothes and hurried down to dress by the stove.
Mary was already dressed and buttoning Carrie up. Hot cornmeal mush, and milk, with the new white bread and butter, were on the table. The daylight was dim white. Frost was thick on every window pane.
Ma shivered over the stove. “Well,” she said, “the stock must be fed.”
She put on Pa’s boots and jumper, and wrapped herself in the big shawl. She told Mary and Laura that she would be gone longer this time, because she must water the horses and the cattle.
When she was gone, Mary was scared and still. But Laura could not bear to be still. “Come on,” she told Mary. “We’ve got the work to do.”
They washed and wiped the dishes. They shook the snow off their bedcovers and made their bed. They warmed again by the stove, then they polished it, and Mary cleaned the woodbox while Laura swept the floors.
Ma had not come back. So Laura took the dust-cloth and wiped the window sills and the benches and every curve of Ma’s willow rocking-chair. She climbed on a bench and very carefully wiped the clock-shelf and the clock, and the little brown-spotted dog and her own jewel-box with the gold teapot and cup-and-saucer on top. But she did not touch the pretty china shepherdess standing on the bracket that Pa had carved for Ma. Ma allowed no one else to touch the shepherdess.
While Laura was dusting, Mary combed Carrie’s hair and put the red-checked cloth on the table, and got out the school-books and the slate.
At last the wind howled into the lean-to with a cloud of snow and Ma.
Her skirt and her shawl were frozen stiff with ice. She had had to draw water from the well for the horses and Spot and the calf. The wind had flung the water on her and the cold had frozen her soaked clothes. She had not been able to get to the barn with enough water. But under the icy shawl she had saved almost all the milk.
She rested a little, and said she must bring in wood. Mary and Laura begged her to let them bring it, but Ma said:
“No. You girls are not big enough and you’d be lost. You do not know what this storm is like. I’ll get the wood. You open the door for me.
She piled wood high on the woodbox and around it, while they opened and shut the door for her. Then she rested, and they mopped up the puddles of snow melting from the wood.
“You are good girls,” Ma said. She looked around at the house, and praised them for doing the work so nicely while she was gone. “Now,” she said, “you may study your lessons.”
Laura and Mary sat down to their books. Laura looked steadily at the page, but she could not study. She heard the storm howling and she heard things in the air moaning and shrieking. Snow swish-swished against the windows. She tried not to think of Pa. Suddenly the words on the page smeared together and a drop of water splashed on them.
She was ashamed. It would be shameful even for Carrie to cry, and Laura was eight years old. She looked sidewise to make sure that Mary had not seen that tear fall. Mary’s eyes were shut so tight that her whole face was crinkled, and Mary’s mouth was wabbling.
“I don’t believe we want lessons, girls!” Ma said. “Suppose we don’t do anything today but play. Think what we’ll play first. Pussy-in-the-corner! Would you like that?”
“Oh yes!” they said.
Laura stood in one corner, Mary in another, and Carrie in the third. There were only three corners, because the stove was in one. Ma stood in the middle of the floor and cried, “Poor pussy wants a corner!”
Then all at once they ran out of their corners and each tried to get into another corner. Jack was excited. Ma dodged into Mary’s corner, and that left Mary out to be poor pussy. Then Laura fell over Jack, and that left Laura out. Carrie ran laughing into the wrong corners at first, but she soon learned.
They all ran until they were gasping from running and shouting and laughing. They had to rest, and Ma said, “Bring me the slate and I’ll tell you a story.”
“Why do you need a slate to tell a story?” Laura asked as she laid the slate in Ma’s lap.
“You’ll see,” said Ma, and she told this story:
Far in the woods there was a pond, like this:
The pond was full of fishes, like this:
Down below the pond lived two homesteaders, each in a little tent, because they had not built their houses yet:
[image]
They went often to the pond to fish, and they made crooked paths:
[image]
A little way from the pond lived an old man and an old woman in a little house with a window:
[image]
One day the old woman went to the pond to get a pail of water: And she saw the fishes all flying out of the pond, like this:
[image]
The old woman ran back as fast as she could go, to tell the old man, “All the fishes are flying out of the pond!”
[image]
The old man stuck his long nose out of the house to have a good look:
[image]
And he said: “Pshaw! It’s nothing but tadpoles!”
“It’s a bird!” Carrie yelled, and she clapped her hands and laughed till she rolled off the footstool. Laura and Mary laughed too and coaxed, “Tell us another, Ma! Please!”
“Well, if I must,” said Ma, and she began, “This is the house that Jack built for two pieces of money.”
She covered both sides of the slate with the pictures of that story. Ma let Mary and Laura read it and look at the pictures as long as they liked. Then she asked, “Mary, can you tell that story?”
“Yes!” Mary answered.
Ma wiped the slate clean and gave it to Mary “Write it on the slate, then,” she said. “And Laura and Carrie, I have new playthings for you.”
She gave her thimble to Laura, and Mary’s thimble to Carrie, and she showed them that pressing the thimbles into the frost on the windows made perfect circles. They could make pictures on the windows.
With thimble-circles Laura made a Christmas tree. She made birds flying. She made a log house with smoke coming out of the chimney. She even made a roly-poly man and a roly-poly woman. Carrie made just circles.
When Laura finished her window and Mary looked up from the slate, the room was dusky. Ma smiled at them.
“We have been so busy we forgot all about dinner,” she said. “Come eat your suppers now.”
“Don’t you have to do the chores first?” Laura asked.
“Not tonight,” said Ma. “It was so late when I fed the stock this morning that I gave them enough to last till tomorrow. Maybe the storm will not be so bad then.”
All at once Laura felt miserable. So did Mary. And Carrie whimpered, “I want Pa!”
“Hush, Carrie!” Ma said, and Carrie hushed.
“We must not worry about Pa,” Ma said, firmly. She lighted the lamp, but she did not set it in the window. “Come eat your suppers now,” she said again, “and then we’ll all go to bed.”

The Third Day
All night the house shook and jarred in the wind. Next day the storm was worse than ever. The noises of the wind were more terrible and snow struck the windows with an icy rattle.
Ma made ready to go to the stable. “Eat your breakfast, girls, and be careful with the fire,” she said. Then she was gone into the storm.
After a long time she came back and another day began.
It was a dark, long day. They huddled close to the stove and the cold pressed against their backs. Carrie was fretful, and Ma’s smile was tired. Laura and Mary studied hard, but they turns looking out at the snow blowing in waves over the ground. The sky looked like ice. Even the air looked cold above that fast-blowing flood of snow, and the sunshine that came through the peep-hole was no warmer than a shadow.
Sidewise from the peep-hole, Laura glimpsed something dark. A furry big animal was wading deep in the blowing snow. A bear, she thought. It shambled behind the corner of the house and darkened the front window.
“Ma!” she cried. The door opened, the snowy, furry animal came in. Pa’s eyes looked out of its face. Pa’s voice said, “Have you been good girls while I was gone?”
Ma ran to him. Laura and Mary and Carrie ran, crying and laughing. Ma helped him out of his coat. The fur was full of snow that showered on the floor. Pa let the coat drop, too.
“Charles! You’re frozen!” Ma said.
“Just about,” said Pa. “And I’m hungry as a wolf. Let me sit down by the fire, Caroline, and feed me.”
His face was thin and his eyes large. He sat shivering, close to the oven, and said he was only cold, not frost-bitten. Ma quickly warmed some of the bean broth and gave it to him.
“That’s good,” he said. “That warms a fellow.”
Ma pulled off his boots and he put his feet up to the heat from the oven.
“Charles,” Ma asked, “did you— Were you—” She stood smiling with her mouth trembling.
“Now, Caroline, don’t you ever worry about me,” said Pa. “I’m bound to come home to take care of you and the girls.” He lifted Carrie to his knee, and put an arm around Laura, and the other around Mary. “What did you think, Mary?”
“I thought you would come,” Mary answered.
“That’s the girl! And you, Laura?”
“I didn’t think you were with Mr. Fitch telling stories,” said Laura. “I—I kept wishing hard.”
“There you are, Caroline! How could a fellow fail to get home?” Pa asked Ma. “Give me some more of that broth, and I’ll tell you all about it.”
They waited while he rested, and ate bean broth with bread, and drank hot tea. His hair and his beard were wet with snow melting in them. Ma dried them with a towel. He took her hand and drew her down beside him and asked:
“Caroline, do you know what this weather means? It means we’ll have a bumper crop of wheat next year!”
“Does it, Charles?” said Ma.
“We won’t have any grasshoppers next summer. They say in town that grasshoppers come only when the summers are hot and dry and the winters are mild. We are getting so much snow now that we’re bound to have fine crops next year.”
“That’s good, Charles,” Ma said, quietly.
“Well, they were talking about all this in the store, but I knew I ought to start home. Just as I was leaving, Fitch showed me the buffalo coat. He got it cheap from a man who went east on the last train running, and had to have money to buy his ticket. Fitch said I could have the coat for ten dollars. Ten dollars is a lot of money, but—”
“I’m glad you got the coat, Charles,” said Ma.
“As it turned out, it’s lucky I did, though I didn’t know it then. But going to town, the wind went right through me, It was cold enough to freeze the nose off a brass monkey. And seemed like my old coat didn’t even strain that wind. So when Fitch told me to pay him when I sell my trapped furs next spring, I put that buffalo coat on over my old one.
“As soon as I was out on the prairie I saw the cloud in the north-west, but it was so small and far away that I thought I could beat it home. Pretty soon I began to run, but I was no more than halfway when the storm struck me. I couldn’t see my hand before my face.
“It would be all right if these blizzard winds didn’t come from all directions at once. I don’t know how they do it. When a storm comes from the north-west, a man ought to be able to go straight north by keeping the wind on his left cheek. But a fellow can’t do anything like that in a blizzard.
“Still, it seemed I ought to be able to walk straight ahead, even if I couldn’t see or tell directions. So I kept on walking, straight ahead, I thought. Till I knew I was lost. I had come a good two miles without getting to the creek, and I had no idea which way to turn. The only thing to do was to keep on going. I had to walk till the storm quit. If I stopped I’d freeze.
“So I set myself to outwalk the storm. I walked and walked. I could not see any more than if I had been stone blind. I could hear nothing but the wind. I kept on walking in that white blur. I don’t know if you noticed, there seem to be voices howling and things screaming overhead, in a blizzard?”
“Yes, Pa, I heard them!” Laura said.
“So did I,” said Mary. And Ma nodded.
“And balls of fire,” said Laura.
“Balls of fire?” Pa asked.
“That will keep, Laura,” said Ma. “Go on, Charles. What did you do?”
“I kept on walking,” Pa answered. “I walked till the white blur turned gray and then black, and I knew it was night. I figured I had been walking four hours, and these blizzards last three days and nights. But I kept on walking.”
Pa stopped, and Ma said, “I had the lamp burning in the window for you.”
“I didn’t see it,” said Pa. “I kept straining my eyes to see something, but all I saw was the dark. Then of a sudden, everything gave way under me and I went straight down, must have been ten feet. It seemed farther.
“I had no idea what had happened or where I was. But I was out of the wind. The blizzard was yelling and shrieking overhead, but the air was fairly still where I was. I felt around me. There was snow banked up as high as I could reach on three sides of me, and the other side was a kind of wall of bare ground, sloping back at the bottom.
“It didn’t take me long to figure that I’d walked off the bank of some gully, somewhere on the prairie. I crawled back under the bank, and there I was with solid ground at my back and overhead, snug as a bear in a den. I didn’t believe I would freeze there, out of the wind and with the buffalo coat to keep warmth in my body. So I curled up in it and went to sleep, being pretty tired.
“My, I was glad I had that coat, and a good warm cap with earlaps, and that extra pair of thick socks, Caroline.
“When I woke up I could hear the blizzard, but faintly. There was solid snow in front of me, coated over with ice where my breath had melted it. The blizzard had filled up the hole I had made when I fell. There must have been six feet of snow over me, but the air was good. I moved my arms and legs and fingers and toes, and felt my nose and ears to make sure I was not freezing. I could still hear the storm, so I went to sleep again.
“How long has it been, Caroline?”
“Three days and nights,” said Ma. “This is the fourth day.”
Then Pa asked Mary and Laura, “Do you know what day this is?”
“Is it Sunday?” Mary guessed.
“It’s the day before Christmas,” said Ma.
Laura and Mary had forgotten all about Christmas. Laura asked, “Did you sleep all that time, Pa?”
“No,” said Pa. “I kept on sleeping and waking up hungry, and sleeping some more, till I woke up just about starved. I was bringing home some oyster crackers for Christmas. They were in a pocket of the buffalo coat. I took a handful of those crackers out of the paper bag and ate them. I felt out in the snow and took a handful, and I ate that for a drink. Then all I could do was lie there and wait for the storm to stop.
“I tell you, Caroline, it was mighty hard to do that, thinking of you and the girls and knowing you would go out in the blizzard to do the chores. But I knew I could not get home till the blizzard stopped.
“So I waited a long time, till I was so hungry again that I ate all the rest of the oyster crackers. They were no bigger than the end of my thumb. One of them wasn’t half a mouthful, and the whole half-pound of them wasn’t very filling.
“Then I went on waiting, sleeping some. I guessed it was night again. Whenever I woke I listened closely, and I could hear the dim sound of the blizzard. I could tell by that sound that the snow was getting thicker over me, but the air was still good in my den. The heat of my blood was keeping me from freezing.
“I tried to sleep all I could, but I was so hungry that I kept waking up. Finally I was too hungry to sleep at all. Girls, I was bound and determined I would not do it, but after some time I did. I took the paper bag out of the inside pocket of my old overcoat, and I ate every bit of the Christmas candy. I’m sorry.”
Laura hugged him from one side and Mary hugged him from the other. They hugged him hard and Laura said, “Oh Pa, I am so glad you did!”
“So am I, Pa! So am I!” said Mary. They were truly glad.
“Well,” Pa said, “we’ll have a big wheat crop next year, and you girls won’t have to wait till next Christmas for candy.”
“Was it good, Pa?” Laura asked. “Did you feel better after you ate it?”
“It was very good, and I felt much better,” said Pa. “I went right to sleep and I must have slept most of yesterday and last night. Suddenly I sat up wide awake. I could not hear a sound.
“Now, was I buried so deep in snow that I couldn’t hear the blizzard, or had it stopped? I listened hard. It was so still that I could hear the silence.
“Girls, I began digging on that snow like a badger. I wasn’t slow in digging up out of that den. I came scrabbling through the top of that snow bank, and where do you suppose I was?
“I was on the bank of Plum Creek, just above the place where we set the fish-trap, Laura.”
“Why, I can see that place from the window,” said Laura.
“Yes. And I could see this house,” said Pa. All that long, terrible time he had been so near. The lamp in the window had not been able to shine into the blizzard at all, or he would have seen its light.
“My legs were so stiff and cramped that I could hardly stand on them,” said Pa. “But I saw this house and I started for home just as fast as I could go. And here I am!” he finished, hugging Laura and Mary.
Then he went to the big buffalo coat and he took out of one of its pockets a flat, square-edge can of bright tin. He asked, “What do you think I have brought you for Christmas dinner?”
They could not guess.
“Oysters!” said Pa. “Nice, fresh oysters! They were frozen solid when I got them, and they are frozen solid yet. Better put them in the lean-to, Caroline, so they will stay that way till tomorrow.”
Laura touched the can. It was cold as ice.
“I ate up the oyster crackers, and I ate up the Christmas candy, but by jinks,” said Pa, “I brought the oysters home!”

Christmas Eve
Pa went early to do the chores that evening, and Jack went with him, staying close to his heels. Jack did not intend to lose sight of Pa again.
They came in, cold and snowy. Pa stamped the snow from his feet and hung his old coat with his cap on the nail by the lean-to door. “The wind is rising again,” he said. “We will have another blizzard before morning.”
“Just so you are here, Charles, I don’t care how much it storms,” said Ma.
Jack lay down contentedly and Pa sat warming his hands by the stove.
“Laura,” he said, “if you’ll bring me the fiddle-box I’ll play you a tune.”
Laura brought the fiddle-box to him. Pa tuned the fiddle and rosined the bow, and then while Ma cooked supper he filled the house with music.
“Oh, Charley he’s a fine young man,
Oh, Charley he’s a dandy!
Charley likes to kiss the girls
And he can do it handy!
“I don’t want none of your weevily wheat,
“I don’t want none of your barley,
I want fine flour in half an hour,
To bake a cake for Charley!”
Pa’s voice rollicked with the rollicking tune, and Carrie laughed and clapped her hands, and Laura’s feet were dancing.
Then the fiddle changed the tune and Pa began to sing about sweet Lily Dale.
“’Twas a calm, still night,
And the moon’s pale light
Shone soft o’er hill and vale…”
Pa glanced at Ma, busy at the stove, while Mary and Laura sat listening, and the fiddle slipped into frolicking up and down with his voice.
“Mary put the dishes on,
The dishes on, the dishes on,
Mary put the dishes on,
We’ll all take tea!”
“And what shall I do, Pa?” Laura cried, while Mary ran to get the plates and cups from the cupboard. The fiddle and Pa kept singing, down all the steps they had just gone up.
“Laura take them off again,
Off again, off again,
Laura clear the table when
We’ve all gone away!”
So Laura knew that Mary was to set the table for supper and she was to clear away afterward.
The wind was screaming fiercer and louder outside. Snow whirled swish-swishing against the windows. But Pa’s fiddle sang in the warm, lamp-lighted house. The dishes made small clinking sounds as Mary set the table. Carrie rocked herself in the rocking-chair and Ma went gently between the table and the stove. In the middle of the table she set a milk-pan full of beautiful brown baked beans, and now from the oven she took the square baking-pan full of golden corn-bread. The rich brown smell and the sweet golden smell curled deliciously together in the air.
Pa’s fiddle laughed and sang,
“I’m Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines,
I feed my horse on corn and beans
Although ’tis far beyond my means, for
I’m Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines!
I’m Captain of the army!”
Laura patted Jack’s furry smooth forehead and scratched his ears for him, and then with both hands she gave his head a quick, happy squeeze. Everything was so good. Grasshoppers were gone, and next year Pa could harvest the wheat. Tomorrow was Christmas, with oyster stew for dinner. There would be no presents and no candy, but Laura could not think of anything she wanted and she was so glad that the Christmas candy had helped to bring Pa safe home again.
“Supper is ready,” Ma said in her gentle voice.
Pa laid the fiddle in its box. He stood up and looked around at them all. His blue eyes shone at them.
“Look, Caroline,” he said, “how Laura’s eyes are shining.”
The End