"Of course, we must keep our promise," agreed Evelyn, with decision, and straightway she went up-stairs for her wraps. The other girls followed more reluctantly.
"'Goodness, girls, look out!" cried somebody from the window. "Did you ever see it so thick? The barns are just down there, where that glimmer is, but you can't see them at all."
"We're pretty far out in the country, and the road's awfully winding. I hope we get home all right."
"Oh, nonsense!" said some one else, with great positiveness. "I should know the way with my eyes shut. Besides, it was as clear as a bell when we came. It can't have been snowing long enough to block things in the least."
They found it had done so however, when they descended to the sleigh. That vehicle had been brought close to the porch, that the girls might not have to walk through the deep snow. The air was so full of the whirling white particles that from the farther end of the sleigh one could barely see the horses.
"I declare, I don't feel just easy about you folks starting out," said the farmer whose guests they had been. "Better watch the road some careful, you driver. I suppose you know it pretty well."
"He doesn't, but I do!" called a tall youth from the driver's seat. "I'll keep him straight. We'll be all right. We're due home at midnight, and we'll be there, unless the roads are too heavy to keep the pace we came in."
"No, sir, we can't ever keep the pace we come in," presently averred the man from the livery-stable, who was driving. "The road's pretty heavy. I declare, I don't know as I ever see snow so thick. Do I turn a little to the right here or do I keep straight ahead?"
"Straight ahead," answered the boy beside him, confidently. "I've been over this road a thousand times, and it doesn't bend to the right for half a mile yet."
"It's lucky you know," said the driver. "I'm all at sea already. Can't see the fences only now and then. I'd ha' swung off there, sure, if you hadn't said not."
As the rising wind began to whirl snowily about their ears and necks, the party turned up their coat-collars and tucked in their fur robes. The horses were plowing with increasing difficulty through the heavily drifted roads, and more than once their driver found himself obliged to make a long detour around a drift which had not been in the road when they first came over it. Moreover, in spite of the snow, the air seemed to have grown colder and to be acquiring a penetrating, icy quality which at last made Jeff declare to Evelyn: