For forty-eight hours the snow-storm had been raging unabated over New
York. After a wild and windy Thursday night the world had awakened to a
mysterious whirl of white on Friday morning, and to a dark, strange day
of steady snowing. Now, on Saturday, dirty snow was banked and heaped
in great blocks everywhere, and still the clean, new flakes fluttered
and twirled softly down, powdering and feathering every little ledge
and sill, blanketing areas in spotless white, capping and hooding every
unsightly hydrant and rubbish-can with exquisite and lavish beauty.
Shovels had clinked on icy sidewalks all the first day, and even during
the night the sound of shouting and scraping had not ceased for a
moment, and their more and more obvious helplessness in the teeth of
the storm awakened at last in the snow-shovellers, and in the men and
women who gasped and stumbled along the choked thoroughfares, a sort of
heady exhilaration in the emergency, a tendency to be proud of the
storm, and of its effect upon their humdrum lives. They laughed and
shouted as they battled with it, and as Nature's great barrier of snow
threw down the little barriers of convention and shyness. Men held out
their hands to slipping and stumbling women, caught them by their
shoulders, panted to them that this was a storm, all right, this was
the worst yet! Girls, staggering in through the revolving glass doors
of the big department stores, must stand laughing helplessly for a few
seconds in the gush of reviving warmth, while they beat their wet
gloves together, regaining breath and self-possession, and straightened
outraged millinery.

Traffic was congested, deserted trucks and motor-cars lined the side
streets, the subways were jammed, the surface cars helpless. Here and
there long lines of the omnibuses stood blocked in snow, and the press
frantically heralded impending shortages of milk and coal, reiterating
pessimistically: "No relief in sight."

But late in Saturday morning there was a sudden lull. The snow stopped,
the wind fell, and the pure, cold air was motionless and sweet. The city
emerged exhausted from its temporary blanketing, and from the buried
benches of Bowling Green to the virgin sweep of pure white beyond Van
Cortlandt Park, began its usual January fight with the snow.

A handsome, rosy old lady, wrapped regally in furs, and with a maid
picking her way cautiously beside her, was one of the first to take
advantage of the sudden change in the weather. Mrs. Melrose had been
held captive for almost two days, first by Thursday's inclement winds,
and then by the blizzard. Her motor-car was useless, and although at
sixty she was an extremely youthful and vigorous woman, her daughters
and granddaughter had threatened to use force rather than let her risk
the danger of an expedition on foot, at least while the storm continued.

But now the wind was gone, and by the time Mrs. Melrose had been
properly shod, and coated, and hatted, there was even a dull glimmer
toward the southeast that indicated the location of the long-lost sun.