"That is very good," said I. "It may be that she appreciates the seriousness of her ewe better than we do."
"I should say she wants to git well," he replied. "She looks like that sort of a person to me. The old woman said she thought we would have to stay awhile till the storm slackened, and I said, yes, indeed, and there wasn't any chance of its slackenin' to-night; besides, I wanted to see the patient before bedtime."
At this moment the door opened and the servant-woman came in.
"She says you are to have supper, and it will be ready in about half an hour. One of you had better go out and attend to your horse, for the man is not coming back to-night."
"I will go to the barn," said I, rising. Uncle Beamish also rose and said he would go with me.
"I guess you can find some hay and oats," said the woman, as we were putting on our coats and overshoes in the kitchen, "and here's a lantern. We don't keep no horse now, but there's feed left."
As we pushed through the deep snow into the barn, Uncle Beamish said:
"I've been tryin' my best to think where we are without askin' any questions, and I'm dead beat. I don't remember no such house as this on the road."
"Perhaps we got off the road," said I.
"That may be," said he, as we entered the barn. "It's a straight road from Warburton to the pike near my sister's house, but there's two other roads that branch off to the right and strike the pike further off to the east. Perhaps we got on one of them in all that darkness and perplexin' whiteness, when it wasn't easy to see whether we were keepin' a straight road or not."