Bess and Beauty--they were the horses, and of all the ugly nags that ever I saw Beauty was the ugliest--started off on a round trot, slewing along down the hill; they knew they were going home just as well as I did. I looked back, as we turned the corner, to see the boys standing round in their red shirts, with the snow behind them, and the fire and the shanties. I felt a mite lonely when I couldn't see them any more; the snow was so dead still, and there were thirty miles of it to cross before I could see human face again. The clouds had an ugly look,--a few flakes had fallen already,--and the snow was purple, deep in as far as you could see under the trees. Something made me think of Ben Gurnell, as I drove on, looking along down the road to keep it straight. You never heard about it? Poor Ben! Poor Ben! It was in '37, that was; he had been out hunting up blazed trees, they said, and wandered away somehow into the Gray Goth, and went over,--it was two hundred feet; they didn't find him, not till spring,--just a little heap of bones; his wife had them taken home and buried, and by and by they had to take her away to a hospital in Portland,--she talked so horribly, and thought she saw bones round everywhere. There is no place like the woods for bringing a storm down on you quick; the trees are so thick you don't mind the first few flakes, till, first you know, there's a whirl of 'em, and the wind is up. I was minding less about it than usual, for I was thinking of Nannie,--that's what I used to call her, Johnny, when she was a girl, but it seems a long time ago, that does. I was thinking how surprised she'd be, and pleased. I knew she would be pleased. I didn't think so poorly of her as to suppose she wasn't just as sorry now as I was for what had happened. I knew well enough how she would jump and throw down her sewing with a little scream, and run and put her arms about my neck and cry, and couldn't help herself. So I didn't mind about the snow, for planning it all out, till all at once I looked up, and something slashed into my eyes and stung me,--it was sleet. "Oho!" said I to myself, with a whistle,--it was a very long whistle, Johnny; I knew well enough then it was no play-work I had before me till the sun went down, nor till morning either. That was about noon,--it couldn't have been half an hour since I'd eaten my dinner; I eat it driving, for I couldn't bear to waste time. The road wasn't broken there an inch, and the trees were thin; there'd been a clearing there years ago, and wide, white, level places wound off among the trees; one looked as much like a road as another, for the matter of that. I pulled my visor down over my eyes to keep the sleet out,--after they're stung too much they're good for nothing to see with, and I _must_ see, if I meant to keep that road.