Not a light was to be seen, not a human being but ourselves was abroad; our feet sank into the snow more than ankle deep, and we heard no sound but the raging wind. Moving as we did, noiselessly along, the moaning and the sobbing of the storm seemed, as it were, to be dissociated from us, and even amid these tempestuous evidences we were engulfed in an awful white silence. We were like three spirits moving through dead streets.
The difficulties in our way were so great that we made but slow progress. Louisa Wolf refused all offers of assistance; she would not touch our hands. Surely some superhuman power must have sustained her through the terrible fatigue she had endured. We were more than an hour reaching the Temple, and if Anna spoke to me, or I to her, it was in a whisper. Only once did we stop--when the distant church bells proclaimed the birth of a New Year.
Sweet and solemn they pealed upon the air, conveying their pregnant message which all do not take to heart--the message of the cradle and the grave.
"A Happy New Year to you, master," said Anna.
"And to you, Anna," I replied.
"The bells of the New Year!" murmured Louisa, Wolf. "God bless my beloved son, and make his life honored and happy!"
At length we were within a hundred yards of Miser Pretzel's residence, and then a singular impression stole upon me. There appeared to be an unusual movement in the air, a tremulous pulsing, as it were. I cannot more clearly define it; the impression was more spiritual than real. But it was prophetic of what followed.
We entered the narrow streets of the Temple; we traversed the tortuous thoroughfare in which Gideon Wolf resided; we stopped before the house, immediately opposite the house of Miser Pretzel.
High up in the air, the beam which kept these houses from falling upon each other in deadly embrace was indicated by a thick band of snow, stretching from garret window to garret window.
"Your son lives here," I said to Louisa Wolf.