encampment and congregation of men. On some there were still
standing the ruins of rudely constructed cabins, or the semblance
of fortification equally rude and incomplete. A fox stealing along
a half-filled ditch, a wolf slinking behind an earthwork, typified
the human abandonment and desolation.

One by one the faint sunset tints faded from the sky; the far-off
crests of the Orange hills grew darker; the nearer files of pines
on the Whatnong Mountain became a mere black background; and, with
the coming-on of night, came too an icy silence that seemed to
stiffen and arrest the very wind itself. The crisp leaves no
longer rustled; the waving whips of alder and willow snapped no
longer; the icicles no longer dropped a cold fruitage from barren
branch and spray; and the roadside trees relapsed into stony quiet,
so that the sound of horse's hoofs breaking through the thin, dull,
lustreless films of ice that patched the furrowed road, might have
been heard by the nearest Continental picket a mile away.

Either a knowledge of this, or the difficulties of the road,
evidently irritated the viewless horseman. Long before he became
visible, his voice was heard in half-suppressed objurgation of the
road, of his beast, of the country folk, and the country generally.
"Steady, you jade!" "Jump, you devil, jump!" "Curse the road, and
the beggarly farmers that durst not mend it!" And then the moving
bulk of horse and rider suddenly arose above the hill, floundered
and splashed, and then as suddenly disappeared, and the rattling
hoof-beats ceased.

The stranger had turned into a deserted lane still cushioned with
untrodden snow. A stone wall on one hand--in better keeping and