The Mistress of Bonaventure by Harold Bindloss

The hole in the roof of the sod-house had been insufficiently stopped, the green birch billets stored in a corner burned sulkily in the rusty stove, so that the earth-floored room was bitterly cold. Still, after tying my horse at one end of it, and partly burying myself in a heap of prairie hay, I managed to sink into a light slumber. I awakened feeling numbed all through, with the pain at the joints which results from sleeping insufficiently protected in a low temperature, and looked about me shivering. There was not a spark in the stove, the horse was stamping impatiently, and, when a sputtering match had shown me that it was after two in the morning, I rose stiffly. Anything appeared better than slowly freezing there, and I strode out into the night, leading the horse by the bridle.

A cold wind swept the prairie, and it was very dark; but, when we had covered a league or so, and the exercise had warmed me, a dull red glare appeared on the horizon. A grass fire was out of the question at that season, and it was evident that somebody's homestead was burning. I was in the saddle the next moment and riding fast towards the distant blaze. The frozen sod was rough, the night very black, and haste distinctly imprudent; but I pressed on recklessly, haunted by a fear that the scene of the conflagration was Bonaventure. Reaching the edge of a rise, I pulled the horse up with a sense of vast relief, for a struggling birch bluff gave me my bearings and made it plain that neither Haldane's homestead nor his daughter could be in peril.