The storm was like a leaning wall,
that bent far over us while its foot dragged along the ground, miles and
miles behind its top. Everything had a tinge of strange, ghastly
greenish blue like the face of a corpse, and it was growing suddenly
dark as if the day had all at once shut down into dusk.
I knew what it meant, though I had never seen the change from calm
warmth to cold wind come with such marked symptoms of suddenness and
violence. It meant a blizzard--though we never heard or adopted the word
until in the late 'seventies. I thought I had plenty of time, however,
and I went into the house and changed my clothes; for I wanted to look
my best when I saw my girl. I put on new and warm underwear, for I
foresaw that it might be bad before I could get home. I put on an extra
pair of drawers under my blue trousers, and a buckskin undervest under
my shirt. I thanked God for this forethought before the night was over.
As I stood naked in making this change of clothes, suddenly the house
staggered as if it had been cuffed by a great hand. I peeped out of the
window, and against the dark sky I could see the young grove of trees
bowing before the great gusts which had struck them from the northwest.
The wall of wind and frost and death had moved against them.
2
The thought in my mind was, Hurry! Hurry! For what if Virginia, in the
schoolhouse without fuel, should try to reach the place where she
boarded, or any inhabited house, in that storm? As yet there was no snow
in the air except the few flakes which were driven horizontally out of
the fierce squall; but I knew that this could not last; for the crust
on the blanket of snow already on the ground would soon be ground
through wherever exposed to the sand-blast of particles already driven
along the surface of the earth in a creeping sheet of white.
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