Even sound seemed frozen, and
the faint muffled beat of hoofs unreal and out of place in the icy
stillness of the wilderness. Still, the horses knew they were nearing
home, and swung into faster pace, while the men drew fur caps down, and
the robes closer round them as the draught their passage made stung
them with a cold that seemed to sear the skin where there was an inch
left uncovered. Now and then a clump of willows or a birch bluff
flitted out of the dimness, grew a trifle blacker, and was left behind,
but there was still no sign of habitation, and Alfreton, too chilled at
last to speak, passed the reins to Winston, and beat his mittened
hands. Winston could scarcely grasp them, for he had lived of late in
the cities, and the cold he had been sheltered from was numbing.
For another hour they slid onwards, and then a dim blur crept out of
the white waste. It rose higher, cutting more blackly against the sky,
and Winston recognized with a curious little quiver the birch bluff
that sheltered Silverdale Grange. Then as they swept through the gloom
of it, a row of ruddy lights blinked across the snow, and Winston felt
his heart beat as he watched the homestead grow into form. He had
first come there an impostor, and had left it an outcast, while now it
was amid the acclamations of those who had once looked on him with
suspicion he was coming back again.
Still, he was almost too cold for any definite feeling but the sting of
the frost, and it was very stiffly he stood up, shaken by vague
emotions, when at last the horses stopped.
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