Page:A strange, sad comedy (IA strangesadcomedy00seawiala).pdf/206

194 brought about by the innocent agency of Colonel Corbin.

One evening the Colonel had his two fine horses hitched up to a two-wheeled chaise which had been resurrected from the loft of the carriage-house during the emergencies of the war time, and started out for the river landing for a parcel he expected by the boat.

It was now past Christmas, and the "Christmas snow" had come, whitening the ground. The Colonel's position in the chaise was one calculated to make a nervous person uneasy. The vehicle ran down on the horses' withers in the most uncomfortable way, and if the traces broke—and they had several breaks in them, mended with twine—the Colonel would be under the horses' hind feet before he knew it. But Colonel Corbin did not know what it was to be afraid of man or beast, and sat back composedly in the chaise, bracing his feet against the low dashboard, while the horses dashed along the slushy country road. The snow does not last in Eastern Virginia, and it only made the road wet and slippery to the most unsatisfactory degree. But over the fields and woods it lay soft and unsoiled. The