out.

What might be seen from this window certainly could not be called a
very pleasant prospect. A broad street with low houses of cold gray
stone is perhaps as uninteresting a form of street as any to be
found in the world, and such was the street Robert looked out upon.
Not a single member of the animal creation was to be seen in it,
not a pair of eyes to be discovered looking out at any of the
windows opposite. The sole motion was the occasional drift of a
vapour-like film of white powder, which the wind would lift like
dust from the snowy carpet that covered the street, and wafting it
along for a few yards, drop again to its repose, till another
stronger gust, prelusive of the wind about to rise at sun-down,--a
wind cold and bitter as death--would rush over the street, and raise
a denser cloud of the white water-dust to sting the face of any
improbable person who might meet it in its passage. It was a keen,
knife-edged frost, even in the house, and what Robert saw to make
him stand at the desolate window, I do not know, and I believe he
could not himself have told. There he did stand, however, for the
space of five minutes or so, with nothing better filling his outer
eyes at least than a bald spot on the crown of the street, whence
the wind had swept away the snow, leaving it brown and bare, a spot
of March in the middle of January.

He heard the town drummer in the distance, and let the sound invade
his passive ears, till it crossed the opening of the street, and
vanished 'down the town.'

'There's Dooble Sanny,' he said to himself--'wi' siccan cauld han's,
'at he's playin' upo' the drum-heid as gin he was loupin' in a bowie