“Is this Sheffield?” I gasped.
“Yes,—all there is here; the balance is two miles over the hills.”
“The town?”
“Town?—no, the settlement;—ain't more's two dozen houses in it.”
“They were to send a carriage and—”
“Yes—that's an old yarn—better foot it for short.” Here he swung his lantern to the engineer craning his head from the cab of the locomotive, and sprang aboard. Then this fragment came whirling through the steam and smoke:—“There's a farmhouse somewhere's over the hill,—follow the fence and turn to—” the rest was lost in the roar of the on-speeding train.
I am no longer young. Furthermore, I hate to carry things—bags especially. One bag might be possible—a very small one; two bags, both big, are an insult.
I deposited the two outside the box-car, tried the doors, inserted my fingers under the sash of one window, looked at the chimney with a half-formed Santa Claus idea of scaling the roof and sliding down to some possible fireplace below; examined the wind-swept snow for carriage tracks, peered into the gloom, and, as a last resort, leaned up against the sheltered side of the box to think.
There was no question that if a vehicle of any kind had been sent to meet me it had long since departed; the trackless roadway showed that. It was equally evident that if one was coming, I had better meet it on the way than stay where I was and freeze to death. The fence was still visible—the near end—and there was a farmhouse somewhere—so the conductor had said, and he seemed to be an honest, truthful man. Whether to right or left of the invisible road, the noise of the train and the howl of the wind had prevented my knowing—but somewhere's—That was a consolation.
The bags were the most serious obstacles. If I carried one in each hand the umbrella would have to be cached, for some future relief expedition to find in the spring.