Ma Snow wore her coral-rose breast-pin, and a tortoise-shell comb thrust through her knob of ginger-colored hair added to her dignity and height; while Miss Vi and Miss Rosie Snow were buttoned into their stylish princess gowns, with large red bows sprouting back of each ear. In truth, the dress of each member of the family bore some little touch which hinted delicately at the fact that with them it had not been always thus.
All Ore City was present. Those who "bached" had stacked their dishes and hurried from the supper-table to the Hinds House, where the regular boarders were already tilted on the rear legs of their chairs with their heads resting comfortably on the particular oily spot on the unbleached muslin sheeting, which each recognized as having been made by weeks of contact with his own back hair.
A little apart and preoccupied sat Uncle Bill with the clipping in his wallet burning like a red-hot coal. He could have swallowed being "carried down the mountain side," but the paragraph wherein "tears of gratitude rained down his withered cheeks" stuck, as he phrased it, in his craw. It set him thinking hard of Bruce Burt and the young fellow's deliberate sacrifice of his life for one old "Chink." Somehow he could not rid himself of blame that he had let him go alone. As soon as he could get back to Ore City he had headed a search party that had failed to locate even the tent under the unusual fall of snow. Well, if Burt had taken a life, even accidentally, he had in expiation given his own.
As he brooded, occasionally the old man glanced at Wilbur Dill. He had seen him before--but where? The sharp-faced, sharp-eyed Yellow-Leg was associated in the older man's mind with something shady, but what it was he could not for the time recall.
"Rosie, perhaps Mr. Dill would like to hear 'When the Robins Nest Again,'" Ma Snow suggested in the sweet, ingratiating tones of a mother with two unattached daughters.
Mr. Dill declared that it was one of his favorite compositions, so Miss Rosie obligingly stood forth with the dog-eared music.
"When the Robins Nest Again, and the flower-r-rs--" she was warbling, but they never bloomed, for Mrs. Snow started for the door, explaining: "I'm sure I heard a scrunching." She threw it open and the yellow light fell upon a gaunt figure leaning against the entrance of the snow tunnel. The man was covered with frost and icicles where his breath had frozen on his cap and upturned collar, while it was obvious from his snow-caked knees and elbows that he had fallen often. He stood staring dumbly at the light and warmth and at Ma Snow, then he stooped and began fumbling clumsily at the strappings of his snow-shoes.