The minister thanked him very much and readily accepted. But, woe is me! there is many a slip in this world ’twixt the cup and the lip.
At dinner that day all three male people seemed to be in more than their usual spirits, while Maggie May sat saying little, but an amused and delighted listener nevertheless.
At nine o’clock it was time to start, but, first and foremost, all went out to have a look at the weather.
It was moonlight—bright, clear, full moonlight—but ever and anon grey and white ominous-looking snow-clouds were driving across the moon’s disc, and rendering it momentarily dark. There was heard also now and then a low moaning sound coming upwards from the pine woods that fringed the icy Don. It appeared as if a storm were awakening in the forest, and might soon burst bounds and go howling over all the land.
“I must confess,” said Mackenzie, shaking his head, “that I don’t quite like the look of things. The wind—what little there is—is dead from the north too. Don’t you think you had better stay all night?”
But for once in a way Sandie was obstinate, and so the sleigh was had out, and Lord Raglan with his jingling bells put proudly in.
Soon after this, bidding their friends an affectionate “good night,” the boys took their seats, and, with a farewell wave of their caps, off they started as silently as if they had been ghosts—only ghosts don’t have such sweetly musical bells.
. . . . . .
They had accomplished about three miles of the journey at no great pace, and were now in a very wild and dreary country indeed, hill and dell and gloomy glen.
They were down in a hollow, and just crossing a Gothic bridge that spanned a stream of dark brown water, which, slowly winding between its banks of snow, looked at present as black as ink. Hardly had they left the bridge, when, from the hills above and from the pine woods, swept a blizzard so terrible that it almost cut their breath away, and caused even the horse himself to stagger and feel faint.