one o'clock
`` You 'll be hanging on the Equator by morning . '' `` While we 're left here in the drifts , '' said a third . `` Oh , the lovely , big , white drifts there 'll be to-morrow ! '' Toward one o'clock the first furious rush of the storm had passed and it had settled into a fifty-mile-an-hour wind , bitterly cold , with snow that drove against the building in fine particles . Freezing air never ceased to enter the thin walls of boards and tar paper . It was necessary to keep the cast-iron stove red-hot to secure anything like comfort . And to this dreadful cold and snow , thought Lee , Imogene would have been left deliberately by Ruth Gardner and Gretzinger !