It was not a cheerful afternoon. Overhead were heavy, gray clouds, and underfoot was snow, long fallen, crusted by alternate thawing and freezing, dingy with the queer winter dust, which comes from nobody knows exactly where. In the beaten track of the roadways was an icy surface, made still more slippery by a thin coating, at once grimy and greasy, offering easy traction for the sledges, piled high with wood, which now and then came crunching along the streets. But it was full of peril to the motor cars, a few of which were abroad, skidding wildly at corners in spite of chained tires and careful driving. Out in the fields the snow was perhaps a foot deep. Where paths had been shoveled the l…
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