she knew that I considered it my duty to get
back to town by night.

The short drive to the neighbour's place was pleasant enough. There was
plenty of snow on this part of the correction line, which farther east
was bare; and it was packed down by abundant traffic. Then came the
parting. I kissed wife and child; and slowly, accompanied by much waving
of hands on the part of the little girl and a rather depressed looking
smile on that of my wife, I turned on the yard and swung back to the
road. The cliffs of black poplar boles engulfed me at once: a sheltered
grade.

But I had not yet gone very far--a mile perhaps, or a little over--when
the trees began to bend under the impact of that squall. Nearly at the
same moment the sun, which so far had been shining in an intermittent
way, was blotted from the sky, and it turned almost dusky. For a long
while--for more than an hour, indeed--it had seemed as if that black
squall-cloud were lying motionless at the horizon--an anchored ship,
bulging at its wharf. But then, as if its moorings had been cast off, or
its sails unfurled, it travelled up with amazing speed. The wind had an
easterly slant to it--a rare thing with us for a wind from that quarter
to bring a heavy storm. The gale had hardly been blowing for ten or
fifteen minutes, when the snow began to whirl down. It came in the
tiniest possible flakes, consisting this time of short needles that
looked like miniature spindles, strung with the smallest imaginable
globules of ice--no six-armed crystals that I could find so far. Many a
snowstorm begins that way with us. And there was even here, in the chasm
of the road, a swing and dance to the flakes that bespoke the force of
the wind above.

My total direction--after I should have turned off the correction
line--lay to the southeast; into the very teeth of the wind. I had to
make it by laps though, first south, then east, then south again, with
the exception of six or seven miles across the wild land west of Bell's
corner; there, as nearly as I could hold the direction, I should have to
strike a true line southeast.

I timed my horses; I could not possibly urge them on to-day. They took
about nine minutes to the mile, and I knew I should have to give them
many a walk. That meant at best a drive of eight hours. It would be dark
before I reached town. I did not mind that, for I knew there would be
many a night drive ahead, and I felt sure that that half-mile on the
souther