No
more the dark, glossy spaces between the long red curtains reflected
fragmentary bits of the bright, warm room within, or gave dull glimpses
of the bosky grove and the clouded sky without. The glass was now blankly
white, opaque, sheeted with ice, and only the wind gave token how the
storm raged. It was indeed a wild night for a drive of fifty miles
through a mountain wilderness, over roads sodden with the late rains, the
deep mire corrugated into ruts by the wheels of travel and now frozen
stiff.
But the roads might well be hopelessly lost under drifts of snow, and the
woods were as uncharted as a trackless ocean. Many water-courses were out
of the banks with the recent floods. Gladys remembered that the county
paper had chronicled the sweeping away of several bridges; others were
left doubtless undermined, insecure, trembling to their fall. Julian
would be often constrained to trust his life to his plucky horse,
swimming when out of his depth, and dragging after him, as best he might,
the vehicle, heavy with its iron fixtures, and reeking with the water and
the tenacious red clay mire.
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