We've had a streak of bad luck since we
left Poker Flat,--you come along, and slap you get into it, too. If you
can hold your cards right along, you're all right. For," added the
gambler, with cheerful irrelevance,--
"I'm proud to live in the service of the Lord,
And I'm bound to die in His army."
The third day came, and the sun, looking through the white-curtained
valley, saw the outcasts divide their slowly decreasing store of
provisions for the morning meal. It was one of the peculiarities of that
mountain climate that its rays diffused a kindly warmth over the wintry
landscape, as if in regretful commiseration of the past. But it revealed
drift on drift of snow piled high around the hut,--a hopeless,
uncharted, trackless sea of white lying below the rocky shores to which
the castaways still clung. Through the marvellously clear air the smoke
of the pastoral village of Poker Flat rose miles away. Mother Shipton
saw it, and from a remote pinnacle of her rocky fastness, hurled in that
direction a final malediction. It was her last vituperative attempt, and
perhaps for that reason was invested with a certain degree of sublimity.
It did her good, she privately informed the Duchess.
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