“Oh wildly wild the winter-blast
Is whirling round the snow;
The wintry storms are up at last,
And care not how they go.
In wreaths and mists, the frozen white
Is torn into the air;
It pictures, in the dreary light,
An ocean in despair.
Come, darkness! rouse the fancy more;
Storm! wake the silent sea;
Till, roaring in the tempest-roar,
It rave to ecstasy;
And death-like figures, long and white,
Sweep through the driving
spray;
And, fading in the ghastly night,
Cry faintly far away.”
I saw Adela shudder. Presently she asked her
papa whether it was not time to go home. Mrs.
Armstrong proposed that she should stay all night;
but she evidently wished to go. It would be rather
perilous work to drive down the hill with the wind
behind, in such a night, but a servant was sent to
hasten the carriage notwithstanding. The colonel
and Percy and I ran along side of it, ready to render
any assistance that might be necessary; and, although
we all said we had never been out in such an uproar
of the elements, we reached home in safety.
As Adela bade us good night in the hall, I certainly
felt very uneasy as to the effects of the night’s
adventures upon her—she looked so pale
and wretched.
She did not come down to breakfast.
But she appeared at lunch, nothing the worse, and
in very good spirits.
If I did not think that this had something to do with
another fact I have come to the knowledge of since,
I don’t know that the particulars of the evening
need have been related so minutely. The other
fact was this: that in the grey dawn of the morning,
by which time the snow had ceased, though the wind
still blew, Adela saw from her window a weary rider
and wearier horse pass the house, going up the street.
The heads of both were sunk low. You might have
thought the poor mare was looking for something she
had lost last night in the snow; and perhaps it was
not all fatigue with Harry Armstrong. Perhaps
he was giving thanks that he had saved two lives instead
of losing his own. He was not so absorbed, however,
but that he looked up at the house as he passed, and
I believe he saw the blind of her window drop back
into its place.
But how did she come to be looking out just at the
moment?
If a lady has not slept all night, and has looked
out of window ninety-nine times before, it is not
very wonderful that at the hundredth time she should
see what she was looking for; that is, if the object
desired has not been lost in the snow, or drowned in
a moorland pit; neither of which had happened to Harry
Armstrong. Nor is it unlikely that, after seeing
what she has watched for, she will fall too fast asleep
to be roused by the breakfast bell.
PERCY AND HIS MOTHER.
At luncheon, the colonel said—
