some sound of them in the shriek of the storm, he took his first step out into the pit of darkness.  He did not run, but went as cautiously as though the night was a dead calm, the club half poised in his hands.  He had measured the distance and the direction of the gate and when at last he touched the saplings of the stockade he knew that he could not be far off in his reckoning.  Ten paces to the right he found the gate and his heart gave a sudden jump of relief.  Half a minute more and it was open.  He propped it securely against the beat of the storm with the club he had taken from Bram Johnson’s bed.

Then he turned back to the cabin, with the little revolver clutched in his hand, and his face was strained and haggard when he found the door and returned again into the glow of the candle-light.  In the center of the room, her face as white as his own, stood Celie.  A great fear must have gripped her, for she stood there in her sleeping gown with her hands clutched at her breast, her eyes staring at him in speechless questioning.  He explained by opening the door a bit and pantomiming to the gate outside the cabin.

“The wolves will be gone in the morning,” he said, a ring of triumph in his voice.  “I have opened the gate.  There is nothing in our way now.”

She understood.  Her eyes were a glory to look into then.  Her fingers unclenched at her breast, she gave a short, quick breath and a little cry—­and her arms almost reached out to him.  He was afraid of himself as he went to her and led her again to the door of her room.  And there for a moment they paused, and she looked up into his face.  Her hand crept from his and went softly to his shoulder.  She said something to him, almost in a whisper, and he could no longer fight against the pride and the joy and the faith he saw in her eyes.  He bent down, slowly so that she might draw away from him if she desired, and kissed her upturned lips.  And then, with a strange little cry that was like the soft note of a bird, she turned from him and disappeared into the darkness of her room.

A great deal of that night’s storm passed over his head unheard after that.  It was late when he went to bed.  He crowded Bram’s long box-stove with wood before he extinguished the last candle.

And for an hour after that he lay awake, thinking of Celie and of the great happiness that had come into his life all in one day.  During that hour he made the plans of a lifetime.  Then he, too, fell into sleep—­a restless, uneasy slumber filled with many visions.  For a time there had come a lull in the gale, but now it broke over the cabin in increased fury.  A hand seemed slapping at the window, threatening to break it, and a volley of wind and snow shot suddenly down the chimney, forcing open the stove door, so that a shaft of ruddy light cut like a red knife through the dense gloom of the cabin.  In varying ways the sounds played a part in Philip’s dreams.  In all those dreams,