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But every remembrance and association was, in our homesick thoughts, grouped about an open arch fire, with the sharp, crisp creak of sleigh-runners outside, in a frozen land fourteen thousand miles away. A Tale of Changhi Bungalow We had been out all day from Singapore on a wild-pig hunt.
This superintendent was a slim creature of thirty-five, with a sandy goatee and short sandy hair; he wore a stiff standing-collar whose upper edge almost reached his ears and whose sharp points curved forward abreast the corners of his mouth a fence that compelled a straight lookout ahead, and a turning of the whole body when a side view was required; his chin was propped on a spreading cravat which was as broad and as long as a bank-note, and had fringed ends; his boot toes were turned sharply up, in the fashion of the day, like sleigh-runners an effect patiently and laboriously produced by the young men by sitting with their toes pressed against a wall for hours together.
The smooth, firm road, crisp and pure as alabaster, over which our sleigh-runners talked with the rippling, musical murmur of summer brooks; the sparkling, breathless firmament; the gorgeous rosy flush of morning, slowly deepening until the orange disc of the sun cut the horizon; the golden blaze of the tops of the bronze firs; the glittering of the glassy birches; the long, dreary sweep of the landscape; the icy nectar of the perfect air; the tingling of the roused blood in every vein, all alert to guard the outposts of life against the besieging cold it was superb!
A dog barked suddenly, not far away, and through the mist I heard the slide of sleigh-runners on snow; and then I knew. I scrambled down, slipping, and gashing my hands upon the rocks and ice. At the foot of the hill I saw two straight and narrow lines on the soft snow. They were the tracks of sleigh-runners. I followed them, sobbing, and catching my breath, and screaming: "Jacqueline!
Near the far shore was a bare spot on the ice cut by one of the sleigh-runners. Up in the woods, opposite, was the Moss Trail. Sunlight fell on the hills above him. He halted, looking up at the tree-tops. Twig, branch, and trunk glowed with the fire of diamonds through a lacy necking of hoar frost. Every tree had put on a jacket of ice and become as a fountain of prismatic hues.
We had only watched in a ruddy glare the big travelling carriage on sleigh-runners harnessed with six horses, a black mass against the snow, going off to the stables, preceded by a horseman carrying a blazing ball of tow and resin in an iron basket at the end of a long stick swung from his saddle bow.
That heart-sick little lady was driven swiftly homeward, the sleigh-runners creaking on the frozen snow: "Walk the horses," she said to Billy, as they entered the long avenue, "and quit talking." While with the doctor and when angrily leaving him, she was the easy victim of a storm of emotions.
This superintendent was a slim creature of thirty-five, with a sandy goatee and short sandy hair; he wore a stiff standing-collar whose upper edge almost reached his ears and whose sharp points curved forward abreast the corners of his mouth a fence that compelled a straight lookout ahead, and a turning of the whole body when a side view was required; his chin was propped on a spreading cravat which was as broad and as long as a bank-note, and had fringed ends; his boot toes were turned sharply up, in the fashion of the day, like sleigh-runners an effect patiently and laboriously produced by the young men by sitting with their toes pressed against a wall for hours together.
Suddenly the little horse hesitated, relaxed into a trot, snorted, reared, and stopped, wheeling half around, with the sleigh-runners diagonally across the half-effaced track, which came to an unexpected stop.
"It is so lucky," whispered Miss Burroughs, "that I happened to think about the bells. We don't make any noise at all." This was true. The slowly uplifted hoofs of the horse descended quietly into the soft snow, and the sleigh-runners slipped along without a sound. "Drive straight for the gate, doctor," whispered Uncle Beamish.
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