51�Թ�

He turned and saw Bessie bent motionless over the pile of bedclothing.

At first, in bed in the dark, it seemed colder than ever, as if there had been some puny quality of faint heat in the single light bulb before Shreve turned it off and that now the iron and impregnable dark had become one with the iron and icelike bedclothing lying upon the flesh slacked and thin-clad for sleeping.

Another task that the white men can interest themselves in is the unloading of the sled and beating the ice and snow out of the fur bedclothing.

This matter of the sheets is no small affair in out of the way places, as it not unfrequently happens that wanderers communicate disease through the bedclothing.

When he again looked out of the aperture in the curtains screening the smoking-compartment from the aisle he saw the porter pass, carrying bedclothing.