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A belief in omens was not confined to the poor and ignorant, for brave men have been known to tremble at seeing a winding-sheet in a candle, and learned men to gather their little ones around them, fearing that one would be snatched away, because a dog outside took a fancy to howl at the moon.
We were all in much better spirits on this night, for there were signs of the wind shifting from south to north-west; and, for the first time in our lives I suppose, we were anxiously watching and desiring this change, as it was the only chance of saving the thousands of sheep and lambs we now knew lay buried under the smooth white winding-sheet of snow.
Every man is provided with a square of canvas with eyelets, which serves as a carpet on which he lies at night, as a stretcher on which, when wounded, he is carried to the place where he can have his injuries attended to, and which, when he is killed, is used as a winding-sheet. The medical organization of the army is as thorough as the military.
Drifts and "snow-wreathes," as northern folk say, were lying in exposed places, in squares and streets, as deep as they lie when sheep are "smoored" on the sides of Sundhope or Penchrist in the desolate Border-land. All day London had been struggling under her cold winding-sheet, like a feeble, feverish patient trying to throw off a heavy white counterpane. Now the counterpane was dirty enough.
He had just got out, for he was holding the half-opened curtain in his hand. He seemed to me the same as formerly, only he was still thinner, and paler and more hideous. His head was shaved, and his body wrapped in a dark winding-sheet. He gave me a hellish glance; a smile full of hate and contempt played on his thin, shrivelled lips.
Now it was draped in the pure winding-sheet of winter, and silent in the repose of Arctic death. Nothing almost was visible but snow. Everything was whelmed in white. Only here and there a few of the sturdier clumps of bushes held up their loads like gigantic wedding-cakes, and broke the universal sameness of the scene. One raven was the only living representative of the birds that had fled.
One mistake followed another: in attempting to replace the hair, it passed a portion of the winding-sheet, in which it was muffled up, over its face; and when it was removed, its lips were no longer pale, but provokingly red one cheek was of the same hue, and the deep blush of the other was now beginning to shine through its treacherous covering.
When the bright warm days and cool starry nights of the Indian summer gave place to the sharp days and frosty nights of early winter when young ice formed on the lakes and rendered canoeing impossible, and the ducks and geese had fled to warmer climes, and the Frost King had sent his first messengers of snow to cover the wilderness with a winding-sheet and herald his return to the Winter Palace then it was that the banished Red River settlers began to feel the pinch of poverty and to understand the full extent of the calamity that had befallen them.
"And so do I!" rejoined Scrymgeour, "or may the standard of Scotland be my winding-sheet!" "Or may the Clyde swallow us up, quick!" exclaimed Lockhart of Lee, shaking his mailed hand at the embassadors. But not another chief spoke for Wallace. Even Sinclair was intimidated, and like others who wished him well, he feared to utter his sentiments.
I did not ask to accompany him, for I felt his emotions were too sacred for even his daughter to witness. I mourned that the desolation of winter was added to the dreariness of death; that a pall of snow, white as her winding-sheet and cold as her clay, covered the churchyard.
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