Page:Fletcher - The Mortover Grange Affair.pdf/287

 may be like north of it, and in those valleys we're going to, I can't guess. It's a wild, savage country that, Mrs. Patello—striking enough in spring, summer and autumn, but in winter—ah! I don't relish facing the last bit of our journey."

"Well, I wish we were there!" repeated Mrs. Patello. "When one's anxious"

But the getting there was not to be as speedy as Mrs. Patello could have wished. The express was late at Derby: the local train to Netherwell was nearly an hour late in starting; it was twice held up in its journey through the wild country which it had to traverse, and the evening had set in and darkness long fallen when Wedgwood and his companions, starved to their bones, turned out at Netherwell amidst what seemed to be a world of snow.

"You'll not get any conveyance of any sort to take you that way to-night, sir!" said a porter of whom Wedgwood enquired as to means of getting to Mortover Grange. "I don't think anything could get through! It's been snowing like this, and sometimes worse, ever since noon yesterday—thirty hours continuous, now—and they say those roads up Mortover way are ever so many feet deep! There's been no cabs, traps, or anything of that sort here all day long."