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Updated: May 21, 2025
Then, dragging blankets and provision behind them on the sled, they started for the river, past the broken snow and the shallow grave where the dead madman lay, past the clump of snow-laden willows where the starving horses that had worked their way down huddled for shelter, too weak to move. Leaden-hearted, Uncle Bill went with reluctant feet.
"He's sped!" gasped Ragnar. I thought for a flash of time, and oh! well do I remember that moment: the huge beast foaming at the jaws and Steinar held to its breast as a little girl holds a doll; the still, snow-laden trees, on the top of one of which sat a small bird spreading its tail in jerks; the red light of evening, and about us the great silences of the sky above and of the lonely forest beneath.
It was a dreary journey, following the course of the Muonio between black, snow-laden forests. The sun rose to a height of seven or eight degrees at meridian; when we came over the same road, on our way north, he only showed half his disc. At Kihlangi the people recognised us, and were as well disposed as their stupidity would allow.
In the early morning, the hare, too cautious to re-enter the "form," which, now that its surroundings were torn asunder, had become a conspicuous rent in the white mantle of the old quarry, crept over the hedge into the woods, and, moving leisurely beneath the snow-laden undergrowth, where her deep footprints could not easily be tracked, selected a suitable spot for a new "form" in the friendly shelter of a fallen pine.
No other of our alpine conifers so finely veils its strength. Its delicate branches yield to the mountains' gentlest breath; yet is it strong to meet the wildest onsets of the gale, strong not in resistance, but compliance, bowing, snow-laden, to the ground, gracefully accepting burial month after month in the darkness beneath the heavy mantle of winter.
A detailed description of that five days' journey over the mountains would of itself suffice to fill a book, for it would be a record of continuous adventure and hairbreadth escapes from avalanches that were constantly threatening to overwhelm them; of treacherous snow-bridges that crumbled away beneath their feet; of furious, icy winds that, seeming to be imbued with demoniac intelligence and malignity, always assailed them in some especially perilous situation, and sought to buffet them from their precarious hold; and of long hours of intolerable suffering when, during the hours of darkness, they were compelled to camp on some snow-patch and build themselves a snow-hut as a partial protection from the howling, marrow-piercing, snow-laden gale.
Some find it in pictures and statues, the mellow liquid pageant of some old master-hand, a stretch of windspent moor, with its leaning grasses and rifted crags, a dark water among glimmering trees at twilight, a rich plain running to the foot of haze-hung mountains, the sharp-cut billows of a racing sea; or a statue with its shapely limbs and its veiled smile, or of the suspended strength of some struggling Titan: all these hold the same inexplicable appeal to the senses, indicating the efforts of spirits who have seen, and loved, and admired, and hoped, and desired, striving to leave some record of the joy that thrilled and haunted, and almost tortured them; and to many people the emotion comes most directly through the words and songs of poetry, that tell of joys lived through, and sorrows endured, of hopes that could not be satisfied, of desires that could not know fulfilment; pictures, painted in words, of scenes such as we ourselves have moved through in old moods of delight, scenes from which the marvellous alchemy of memory has abstracted all the base and dark elements, leaving only the pure gold of remembered happiness the wide upland with the far-off plain, the garden flooded with sun, the grasses crisped with frost, the snow-laden trees, the flaming autumn woods, the sombre forest at shut of day, when the dusk creeps stealthily along the glimmering aisles, the stream passing clear among large-leaved water-plants and spires of bloom; and the mood goes deeper still, for it echoes the marching music of the heart, its glowing hopes, its longing for strength and purity and peace, its delight in the nearness of other hearts, its wisdom, its nobility.
A horse was hitched to the fence and a man was walking toward the porch and the lad wondered if that stranger, too, could be on his trail. On upward he went until just below him he could see the old circuit rider's cabin under a snow-laden pine, and all up and down the Hawn Creek were signs of activity from the outside world.
Had the thrice-accursed Confederacy and our malignant gaolers millions of lives, our great revenge would have stomach for them all. The December morning was gray and leaden; dull, somber, snow-laden clouds swept across the sky before the soughing wind.
His gaze was on the Cove below, where the snow-laden ice was discoloured by the moist slush of thaw, and the open waters, far down towards the distant headlands, had so deeply encroached upon the claims of winter. A great, premature thaw had set in. It was the real spring thaw a month or more early. Skert Lawton, who controlled the water power of the mill, had warned him of its coming.
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