Nils represented, not altogether unreasonably, that the wind had gone to sleep first.
“What is to be done now?” said Moodie, breaking off a discontented and reflective whistle, the last notes of which had been singularly out of tune; “I cannot send this sleepy old fool to Leckö, or anywhere else, for I do not know where Leckö is, or where we are, or anything about it in this fog; who was to have thought of this?”
“Never mind,” said the Parson—
“The wisest schemes of mice and men
Gang aft ajee;”—
“I suppose this fog will clear off some time or other, and we are well provisioned, at all events.”
“Yes,” said Moodie, “but we have sent on a forebud, and we shall have to pay for the horses all the way up.”
“Well, that is a bad job,” said the Parson, “as far as it goes; but the worst that can come of it is to pay double,—once for the failure, and once for the real journey.”
“No, that is not the worst, by any means; we have not only lost our money, but our forebud; we shall be kept waiting for an hour or two at every station, and shall most probably arrive when the fun is over. At such out-of-the-way places there is not a chance of holl-horses, that is to say, horses which the post-master keeps himself on speculation, and we shall have to send to the farms, whose turn it is to furnish them. I have been kept waiting that way for four hours at a single station.”