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So this was the precious joke that had been played upon me; to send me on a bitter cold, sleety night, to a church which was shut up and had perhaps been shut up for years!
It was a snowy and sleety April morning, and she had already had experience of its rigour. 'I said a four-wheeler. 'Please'm, there wasn't one, Sarah defended herself. 'None on the stand, lady, said the cabman brightly. 'You'll never get a four-wheeler on a day like this. Aunt Annie raised her veil and looked at her sister.
The gray, wintry afternoon was drawing to a close, and the December night was shutting down upon the Honedale hills in sleety rain, when the cottage was reached, and Maddy, passing up the narrow, slippery walk, entered the cold, dreary room, where there was neither fire nor light, nor friendly voice to greet her.
Suddenly an influx of light filled my house, though the evening was at hand, and the clouds of winter still overhung it, and the eaves were dripping with sleety rain.
On the way over to the wood-lot one of the greys slipped on a glare of ice and cut his knee; and when they got him up again Jotham had to go back to the barn for a strip of rag to bind the cut. Then, when the loading finally began, a sleety rain was coming down once more, and the tree trunks were so slippery that it took twice as long as usual to lift them and get them in place on the sledge.
Instantly Valdemar raised her from the ground, and holding her tenderly and reverently in his strong arms, carried her, as though she were a child, into the house . . . clouds darkened the snow-storm thickened the mountain-peaks, stern giants, frowned through their sleety veils at the arctic desolation of the land below them, and over the charred and sunken corpse of the departed servant of Odin, sounded the solemn De Profundis of the sea.
The night of the big wind was followed by a day and a night of gusts of wind and sleety rain; then followed a day and a night of rising clouds, then a day when the clouds were scattered and the sun was cold. That day the sunset was grim, white, and freezing cold.
When they gathered in the mess-room they filled it with the odor of sweaty bodies and profane grumbling about the weather. Early in December Benton sent out a big boom of logs with a hired stern-wheeler that was no more than out of Roaring Lake before the snow came. The sleety blasts of a cold afternoon turned to great, moist flakes by dark, eddying thick out of a windless night.
At times he turned the swiveled searchlight upon a road-sign and evoked a glistening play of silver on the trees. Once, cursing, he changed a tire; once the car skidded dangerously in a circle but to Frank his air of confidence was hypnotically convincing. The final stretch of the journey became a dim and frosty blur of sleety trees. At Finlake they began to climb.
Many have from time to time attempted it in vain; some, after almost reaching the summit, have been driven back by thunderbolts or sleety whirlwinds. Not far from my place of residence are the ruins of a mill, in a narrow ravine fringed with trees. Some forty years ago the mill was supposed to be haunted; and horse-shoes, in consequence, were nailed over its doors.
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