“They say symbols are what you take them for, or else a cross might just as well be a gallows, but those cards looked very secular to me. It was a grim, cheerless power that those were a symbol of. I think Lizzie thought so too, for the sight of them seemed to bring her round a little. She knitted her fat fingers together on the gipsy’s knee and sank to the floor. ‘Nay, woman,’ she said, ‘we’ll have a surer comfort than that, you and I;’ and the woman glanced from the cards, as she cut and cut them, to Lizzie’s head on her knee, incuriously.... I went out. I’d seen one or two of the men glancing at the door, as if they’d have liked to be on the other side of it; but I just walked out. I thought I’d take a walk--to see Reuben Ward at the station.
“Coming out of the candle-light, I blinked like a flittermouse. The sky was still a keen blue, with the snow whirling and glittering and dancing; but the light was dying, and I guessed it would be about half-past four--the hands of the school-house clock were fast frozen to its face. I turned up the blacksmith’s alley to get a shovel: it was smooth to the eaves with snow, and little wisps and curls played on the surface like smoke. The wind was blowing big guns intermittently, and in the intervals I could hear the thunder of the Spit. I set out for the station, and in a dozen yards was up to my waist in a river of snow.
“There was a windmill before you came to the station. There’s one yet, but it’s a dummy--a sailing-mark for ships, and the Board of Trade looks after it. It worked in those days, and belonged to a fellow called Rhodes. I was a strongish chap, you must know, not so tall as Willie Harverson, but as broad, or thereabouts; but by the time I reached the mill I was glad enough of its shelter. And then I looked up, and backed away again. The sail-shutters were open, and the wind screamed through them; but the gearing--all those cranks and elbows about the pin--that had gone; and two or three blades of the steering-fan hummed like bits of ribbon in the wind. The whole thing had swung round like a weathercock, and the heavy top storey rocked and lifted, like a mouth opening and shutting. Underneath it a man was lying on his back in the snow, watching it as if it were a plaything.
