The Rangers | Page 2

came over the face of the traveller, which seemed like the breath
of a heated oven. As the day advanced, the sky gradually became
overcast--a strong south wind sprung up, before whose warm puffs the
drifted snow-banks seemed literally to be cut down, like grass before
the scythe of the mower; and, at length, from the thickening mass of
cloud above, the rain began to descend in torrents to the mutely
recipient earth. All this, for a while, however, produced no very visible
effects on the general face of nature; for the melting snow was many
hours in becoming saturated with its own and water from above. Nor
had our travellers, for the greater part of the day, been much
incommoded by the rain, or the thaw, that was in silent, but rapid
progress around and beneath them; as their vehicle was a covered one,
and as the hard-trodden paths of the road were the last to be affected.
But, during the last hour, a great change in the face of the landscape
had become apparent; and the evidence of what had been going on
unseen, through the day, was now growing every moment more and
more palpable. The snow along the bottom of every valley was marked
by a long, dark streak, indicating the presence of the fast-collecting
waters beneath. The stifled sounds of rushing streams were heard
issuing from the hidden beds of every natural rill; while the larger
brooks were beginning to burst through their wintry coverings, and
throw up and push on before them the rending ice and snow that
obstructed their courses to the rivers below, to which they were
hurrying with increasing speed, and with seemingly growing
impatience at every obstacle they met in their way. The road had also
become so soft, that the horses sunk nearly to the flank at almost every
step, and the plunging sleigh drove heavily along the plashy path. The
whole mass of the now saturated and dissolving snow, indeed, though
lying, that morning, more than three feet deep on a level, seemed to
quiver and move, as if on the point of flowing away in a body to the
nearest channels.
The company we have introduced consisted of four gentlemen and two
ladies, all belonging, very evidently, to the most wealthy, and, up to
that time, the most honored and influential class of society. But though

all seemed to be of the same caste, yet their natural characters, as any
physiognomist, at a glance, would have discovered, were, for so small a
party, unusually diversified. Of the two men occupying the front seat,
both under the age of thirty, the one sitting on the right and acting as
driver was tall, showily dressed, and of a haughty, aristocratic air;
while his sharp features, which set out in the shape of a half-moon, the
convex outline being preserved by a retreating forehead, an aquiline
nose, and a chin sloping inward, combined to give him a cold, repulsive
countenance, fraught with expressions denoting selfishness and
insincerity. The other occupant of the same seat was, on the contrary, a
young man of an unassuming demeanor, shapely features, and a mild,
pleasing countenance. The remaining two gentlemen of the party were
much older, but scarcely less dissimilar in their appearance than the
two just described. One of them was a gaunt, harsh-featured man, of the
middle ago, with an air of corresponding arrogance and assumption.
The other, who was still more elderly, was a thick-set and rather portly
personage, of that quiet, reserved, and somewhat haughty demeanor,
which usually belongs to men of much self-esteem, and of an
unyielding, opinionated disposition. The ladies were both young, and in
the full bloom of maidenly beauty. But their native characters, like
those of their male companions, seemed to be very strongly contrasted.
The one seated on the left was fair, extremely fair, indeed; and her
golden locks, clustering in rich profusion around her snowy neck and
temples, gave peculiar effect to the picture-like beauty of her face. But
her beauty consisted of pretty features, and her countenance spoke
rather of the affections than of the mind, being of that tender, pleading
cast, which is better calculated to call forth sympathy than command
respect, and which, showed her to be one of those confiding, dependent
persons, whose destinies are in me hands of those whom they consider
their friends, rather than in their own keeping. The other maiden, with
an equally fine form and no less beautiful features, was still of an
entirely different appearance. She, indeed, was, to the one first
described what the rose, with its hardy stem, is to the lily leaning on the
surrounding herbage for its support; and though less delicately fair in
mere complexion, she was yet more commandingly