1 Opposite the Varnum gate, where the road fell away toward the Corbury valley, the church reared its slim white steeple and narrow peristyle.
2 She moved forward a step or two and then paused again above the dip of the Corbury road.
3 Ethan's ears were alert for the jingle of sleigh-bells, but not a sound broke the silence of the lonely road.
4 His first object was to reach Starkfield before Hale had started for his work; he knew the carpenter had a job down the Corbury road and was likely to leave his house early.
5 She gave him a last nod of sympathy while her son chirped to the horse; and Ethan, as she drove off, stood in the middle of the road and stared after the retreating sleigh.
6 He started down the road toward their house, but at the end of a few yards he pulled up sharply, the blood in his face.
7 At the gate, instead of making for Starkfield, he turned the sorrel to the right, up the Bettsbridge road.
8 They drove slowly up the road between fields glistening under the pale sun, and then bent to the right down a lane edged with spruce and larch.
9 By a devious track between the fields they wound back to the Starkfield road.
10 They had reached the point where the road dipped to the hollow by Ethan's mill and as they descended the darkness descended with them, dropping down like a black veil from the heavy hemlock boughs.
11 A cutter, mounting the road from the village, passed them by in a joyous flutter of bells, and they straightened themselves and looked ahead with rigid faces.
12 But his cheek touched hers, and it was cold and full of weeping, and he saw the road to the Flats under the night and heard the whistle of the train up the line.
13 Suddenly he heard the old sorrel whinny across the road, and thought: "He's wondering why he doesn't get his supper."
14 He stretched out his legs, drove his heels into the road to keep the sled from slipping forward, and bent her head back between his hands.
15 Just as they started he heard the sorrel's whinny again, and the familiar wistful call, and all the confused images it brought with it, went with him down the first reach of the road.