predicted, no objection
made to the departure of a young girl and an old man. Others were
quitting Dantzig by the same gate, on foot, in sleighs and carts; but
all turned westward at the cross-roads and joined the stream of refugees
hurrying forward to Germany. Barlasch and Desiree were alone on the wide
road that runs southward across the plain towards Dirschau. The air
was very cold and still. On the snow, hard and dry like white dust, the
runners of the sleigh sang a song on one note, only varied from time to
time by a drop of several octaves as they passed over a culvert or
some hollow in the road, after which the high note, like the sound of
escaping steam, again held sway. The horses fell into a long steady
trot, their feet beating the ground with a regular, sleep-inducing thud.
They were harnessed well forward to a very long pole, and covered the
ground with free strides, unhampered by any thought of their heels. The
snow pattered against the cloth stretched like a wind-sail from their
flanks to the rising front of the sleigh.

Barlasch sat upright, a thick motionless figure, four-square to the
cutting wind. He drove with one hand at a time, sitting on the other to
restore circulation between whiles. It was impossible to distinguish the
form of his garments, for he was wrapped round in a woollen shawl like
a mummy, showing only his eyes beneath the ragged fur of a sheepskin
cap upon which the rime caused by the warmth of the horses and his own
breath had frozen like a coating of frosted silver.

Desiree was huddled down beside him, with her head bent forward so as to
protect her face from the wind, which seared like a hot iron. She wore a
hood of white fur lined with a darker fur, and when she lifted her face
only her eyes, bright and wakeful, were visible.

"If you are warm, you may go to sleep," said Barlasch in a mumbling
voice, for his face was drawn tight and his lips stiffened by the cold.
"But if you shiver, you must stay awake."

But Desiree seemed to have no wish for sleep. Whenever Barlasch leant
forward to peer beneath her hood she looked round at him with wakeful
eyes. Whenever, to see if she were still awake, he gave her an
unceremonious nudge, she nudged back again instantly. As the night wore
on, she grew more wakeful. When they halted at a wayside inn, which
must have been minutely described to Barlasch by Sebastian, and Desiree
accepted the innkeeper's offer of a cup of coffee by the fire whi