COLD FINGERS. 
203 
found Mr. and Mrs. Maxwell and Miss E— — 
picking their way over rocks and fallen trees, 
underneath gloomy evergreens, and through open 
^grassy glades, searching for the wood where the 
elk lay. 
At last it was found, and Mr. Maxwell having 
brought his gun with him, left them, to see if by 
looking about in the neighborhood of their trip 
the day previous, he could find the buffalo calf. 
In the meantime an icy rain, alternating with snow, 
had set in, and Mrs. Maxwell and Miss E , 
who for a time assisted her, found their task of 
skinning the elk an intensely uncomfortable one. 
The chilling drops beat down on hands that were 
soon so numb that they could hardly hold the 
knife, or be made to obey any command of the 
will that would not let them desist from work. 
Breathing upon her fingers to enable them to 
make any kind of figures upon a page so splashed 
by rain as to be pretty much a blot, the measure- 
ments were recorded. Late in the afternoon the 
disagreeable work ended, and she joined Miss 
E in her retreat under the thick foliage of a 
fir-tree, to wait for Mr. Maxwell’s return. It must 
be admitted that a more forlorn-looking couple 
of human beings are seldom seen, than he found, 
dripping, shivering, and listening to the melan- 
choly soughing of the wind among the dark 
evergreens of that lonely . mountain-side ! He 
