1 a.m.
I was alone in the station , and as December began to wane , and the dread blizzards commenced their wild revelry , heaping the snow into such huge mounds on the tracks that the trains were delayed for days , I got as homesick and nervous as a girl of fourteen instead of a young man of twenty . Christmas eve ushered in bitter weather . All day it had been snowing and storming . At 1 a.m. the glass showed twenty-two below zero . The storm had risen and risen until it was blowing a perfect blizzard from the west . The riotous wind , as it swept along the vast prairie , unobstructed for scores of miles by houses or trees , caught up the newly-fallen snow in its mad embrace , and drove it with amazing force against the little telegraph office which sheltered me from its deathly embrace , as though enraged against this earnest of approaching civilization . So fierce , at times , was the onslaught that the tense telegraph wires could be heard humming even above the demoniacal glee of the storm .