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Philip Steele's pencil drove steadily over the paper, as if the mere writing of a letter he might never mail in some way lessened the loneliness. The wind is blowing a furious gale outside. From off the lake come volleys of sleet, like shot from guns, and all the wild demons of this black night in the wilderness seem bent on tearing apart the huge end-locked logs that form my cabin home.
The flavor of nights about the camp-fire and other nights spent in driving sleet, also days when the first flowers come and the wide beds of the desert rivers are swollen with overbrimming floods; the cruel exposure of winter, the thrilling balminess of early spring all spoke to him again from that motionless figure.
There had been a heavy fall of sleet in the morning, and now the wind blew gustfully about the place. The neglected trees shook showers upon him as he passed under them, trampling down the rank growth of the grass-walks.
There is, of course, a bitterly substantial basis for this feeling, as the dozens of stiffened forms whose only winding-sheet was the curling snowdrift, or whose coffin the frozen sleet, bear ghastly witness.
We passed a dismal day, as, wrapped in our warmest clothes, we sat upon our beds watching the rain turn to snow, then to hail and sleet, and finally back to rain again; while the ever-changing wisps of grey mist gathered thick in the glens, or "put forth an arm and crept from pine to pine."
And Duncan was not at all sorry to be saved that trudge of a mile in the face of those bitter blasts of sleet; and he was greatly obliged to Sir Keith Macleod for stopping his pony, and getting out his pencil with his benumbed fingers, and putting his initials to the sheet.
Winter with its snow and sleet was now the silent but none the less potent ally of the French and Indians in preventing their escape. They toiled on two or three miles, not one of the three speaking. The sleet and hail thickened.
Dreams, and other things 'this ae night of all. Not that my reason admits that they can be more than dreams, you know, Griggs. Reason says 'to sleep no more. And fancy says 'perchance to dream. Well, well, it will be a long dream, that's all." "Yes. We shall be dead a long time. Better drink now." And Griggs drank. "'Fire and sleet and candle-light, And Christ receive thy soul;"
There was no glory in it, save for the four regiments who set their faces against that sleet of lead. The artillery did not do well, and were browbeaten by guns which they should have smothered under their fire. The cavalry cannot be said to have done well either. And yet, when all is said, the action is an important one, for the enemy were badly shaken by the result.
A heavy sleet was falling steadily, through which a few streaming caches showed in the gathering darkness. "You'd better hurry up," he advised, thanking her for the assistance and relaunching the boat. "Two miles of stiff trail from here to Happy Camp. No wood until you get there, so you'd best hustle along. Good-by." Frona reached out and took his hand, and said, "You are a brave man."
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